Paranoia - Social Uncertainty and the Fragility of Trust

Organizational Paranoia

Social Uncertainty and the Fragility of Trust:

Origins and Dynamics of Organizational Paranoia

Roderick M. Kramer

Graduate School of Business

Stanford University

Running head: Organizational Paranoia

First Draft – Prepared for Research in Organizational Behavior (Editors: Barry Staw &

Robert Sutton)

Author Information

Early versions of these ideas were presented at the Bellagio Conference on Distrust,

Russell Sage Foundation Workshop on Trust in Organizations, and Tutzing Conference

on Trust in Society and Organizations. Comments from participants at those conferences

are gratefully acknowledged. I am greatly indebted also to Karen Cook, Diego Gambetta,

Russell Hardin, James March, Joanne Martin, Jeffrey Pfeffer, Robert Sutton, Bernard

Weiner, and Phil Zimbardo for their insightful comments at various stages of this work.

Correspondence regarding this chapter should be addressed to the author care of:

Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, Stanford CA 94305 or via e-mail at

[email protected].


Abstract

Distrust and suspicion are common and recurring problems within many organizations.

Our understanding of the antecedents and consequences of such distrust and suspicion,

however, remains far from complete. The present chapter addresses this issue by

articulating an original framework for conceptualizing the origins and dynamics of a

heightened and exaggerated form of distrust and suspicion termed organizational

paranoia. Drawing on recent social psychological theory and research, the framework

identifies social cognitive processes that contribute to the development of organizational

paranoia. The framework also explicates psychological, behavioral, and organizational

consequences of such paranoia. Evidence in support of the framework is reviewed.

Approaches to reducing organizational paranoia are considered.


Social Uncertainty and the Fragility of Trust:

Origins and Dynamics of Organizational Paranoia

"I just knew my enemies were plotting against me . . . I was beginning to have a

vague sense of isolation. Things were happening without my knowledge. I was beginning

to be excluded from meetings . . . I started to hear about deals being made that I knew

nothing about, projects put into development that had never been discussed with me . . . I

felt surrounded by people plotting against me."

-- Hollywood Studio President, Dawn Steel (1993, pp. 222-223)

"I believe in the value of paranoia."

-- Intel CEO, Andrew Grove (1996).

Organizational theorists have long recognized the importance of trust, noting the

central role trust plays in the development of more cooperative and productive

relationships among organizational members (e.g., Arrow, 1974; Barber, 1983; Zucker,

1986). Within the past few years, there has been a renewed appreciation of trust and

interest in exploring more precisely how trust influences a variety of important

organizational processes and outcomes (Brown, 1994; Carnevale, 1994; Lane &

Bachman, 1998; Mayer Davis & Schoorman 1995, McAllister 1995, Sitkin & Roth 1993;

Sitkin, Rousseau, Burt, & Camerer, 1998; Whitney, 1994). The ascension of trust as a

major focus of recent organizational theory and research reflects, in no small measure,

accumulating evidence of the substantial and varied benefits that accrue when high levels


of trust exist within complex social systems (Fukuyama, 1995; Hollis, 1998; Putnam,

2000; Sztompka, 1999).

Although recognizing the myriad benefits that flow from trust, organizational

scholars have acknowledged also that trust tends to be a fragile and elusive resource

(Arrow, 1974). However desirable and valuable the bonds of trust may be, they are often

hard to establish and easily disrupted (Fox, 1974; Nye, Zelikow, & King, 1997; Pew,

1998; Sitkin & Roth, 1993). Although the fragility of trust has been widely noted

(Gambetta, 1988; Meyerson, Weick, & Kramer, 1996; Slovic, 1993), it has been the

subject of surprisingly little systematic theory or research. For example, although there

exist numerous models that elaborate the dynamics of trust development (e.g., Lewicki &

Bunker, 1995; Lindskold, 1978; Sztompka, 1999), models that systematically explicate

the barriers or impediments to trust are virtually nonexistent (see Footnote 1). As a

consequence, the conditions that contribute to the fragility of trust remain only poorly

understood. Why is trust often so hard to establish and so easily disrupted, even when its

benefits so individually and collectively transparent to organizational members?

The primary aim of this chapter is to address this important question by advancing

a framework for conceptualizing the origins and dynamics of a peculiar form of

heightened and exaggerated distrust termed organizational paranoia. Such paranoia can

arise at virtually every level of organization from the interpersonal to the collective. For

example, employees of an organization can be paranoid about what they think their

fellow co-workers are thinking or doing “behind their backs.” Subordinates can feel

paranoid about the extent to which their supervisors or managers are treating them fairly

or have their long-term interests at heart. Members from one group or department in an


organization can be paranoid about what other groups or departments are doing. Even

organizational leaders are vulnerable to the development of paranoid-like fears and

preoccupations. As these examples illustrate, organizational paranoia can take many

forms, depending on the nature of the relationship between paranoid perceivers and the

target of their paranoia (see Footnote 2).

Conceptualizing Organizational Paranoia

To more formally develop the notion of organizational paranoia, and to help

situate it within a wider nomological net, it may be helpful to begin with an overview of

some of the more prominent images of distrust and suspicion encountered in the social

science literature. Social scientists have generally conceptualized distrust as an active

psychological state characterized by a specific constellation of negative expectations and

beliefs regarding the lack of trustworthiness of other persons, groups, or institutions

(Deutsch, 1958, 1973; Gambetta, 1988; Rotter, 1980). For example, Govier (1993)

defined distrust in terms of the "absence of confidence in the other, a concern that the

other may act so as to harm one, that he does not care about one’s welfare or intends to

act harmfully, or is hostile. When one distrusts, one is fearful and suspicious as to what

the other might do” (p. 240).

As Govier's definition suggests, suspicion constitutes one of the important

components of distrust. Fein (1996) has characterized such suspicion as a cognitive state

in which a social perceiver “actively entertains multiple, plausibly rival, hypotheses about

the motives or genuineness of a person's behavior” (p. 1165). Fein and Hilton (1994)

have noted further that suspicion entails a “belief that the actor's behavior may reflect a

motive that the actor wants hidden from the target of his or her behavior" (p. 169).


To explain distrust and suspicion, researchers have often noted the critical role

that prior experience plays in shaping individuals’ beliefs about others’ trustworthiness or

lack of it. Models of trust development typically posit, for example, that individuals’

judgments about another’s trustworthiness or lack of trustworthiness can be construed

largely as history-dependent processes (e.g., Deutsch, 1958; Lindskold, 1978, 1986;

Pilisuk & Skolnick, 1968; Rotter, 1980). According to such conceptions, individuals’

trust in others "thickens" or "thins"--increases or decreases--as a function of their

cumulative history of interaction with them.

In noting the formative role that experience plays in the emergence of trust and

distrust, these models imply individuals' judgments about another’s trustworthiness or

lack of it are anchored, at least in part, on their a priori expectations about the other’s

behavior and the extent to which subsequent experience affirms or discredits those

expectations. Boyle and Bonacich’s (1970) analysis of trust development is

representative of such arguments. Individuals’ expectations about trustworthy behavior,

they propose, tend to change, “in the direction of experience and to a degree proportional

to the difference between this experience and the initial expectations applied to it" (p.

130). In support of such arguments, numerous empirical studies have shown that

interactions that reinforce individuals’ expectations about other’s trustworthiness increase

trust, while interactions that violate those expectancies tend to undermine it (Lindskold,

1978; Pilisuk & Skolnick, 1968; Rotter, 1980). In addition to showing that individuals’ a

priori expectations influence their judgments about a target person’s trustworthiness,

other research has shown that such judgments are influenced also by the a posteriori

attributions they make about another's actions (Gabarro, 1978; Kruglanski, 1970, 1987;


Strickland, 1958). According to these studies, such attributions influence the inferences

social perceivers make about others’ trust-related motives, intentions, and dispositions.

Related research has demonstrated that the existence of uncertainty or doubt

regarding others' trustworthiness induces fairly vigilant appraisal of others' actions, in an

attempt to discern their presumably concealed intentions and motives. Experiments by

Fein and his associates (Fein, 1996; Fein & Hilton, 1994; Hilton, Fein, & Miller, 1993)

have shown, for example, that induced suspicion triggers a sophisticated analysis of

others' intentions and motives, an analysis "characterized by active, careful consideration

of the potential motives and causes that may influence [their] behaviors" (Fein, 1996, p.

1167). The findings from these experiments further suggest that suspicion is evoked

under at least three conditions. First, suspicion is often evoked when perceivers

recognize situational cues or are in possession of contextual information suggesting

others might have ulterior motives for their actions. Second, it can be evoked when they

have forewarnings others might be insincere or untrustworthy. Third, it can be evoked

when their expectations about others have been violated.

The portrait of the social perceiver that emerges from these diverse streams of

research is compatible with the idea that, when trying to make judgments about others'

trustworthiness, decision makers often behave much like "intuitive social auditors” or

“mental accountants” who closely monitor or "track" their trust-related transactions in the

hope of discriminating more accurately who among them can be trusted, how much and

under what circumstances (cf., Bendor, Kramer, & Stout, 1991; Kramer, 1996).

According to this intuitive auditor model, social perceivers tend to be vigilant and

mindful social information processors, especially when the benefits of trust are perceived


to be substantial and the costs of trust mistakes steep (Kramer, Meyerson, & Davis,

1990). The intuitive auditor model begins with two assumptions. First, it assumes that

peoples' judgments regarding others' trustworthiness reflect intendedly rational and

adaptive (i.e., systematic, orderly and efficacious) processes of social inference and

hypothesis testing. Second, it assumes that, like "good" Bayesians, they try to update

their social “mental accounts” on the basis of their ongoing experiences and accumulating

evidence with others. Thus, people distrust when the evidence warrants it.

Although recognizing that judgments about others' trustworthiness sometime

resemble this sort of mindful and intendedly rational assessment process, a number of

researchers have noted that other variants of distrust and suspicion appear to be far less

rational with respect to both their origins and their judgmental consequences (Barber,

1983; Deutsch, 1973; Luhman, 1979). On the basis of such evidence, Deutsch (1973)

argued it is useful to distinguish between rational and nonrational variants of distrust.

The critical feature of rational distrust, he suggested, “is that it is flexible and responsive

to changing circumstances” (p. 170). In contrast, nonrational forms of distrust are

characterized by an “inflexible, rigid, unaltering tendency to act in a . . . suspicious

manner, irrespective of the situation or the consequences of so acting" (p. 171). The

pathology of such irrational distrust, Deutsch went on to argue, is reflected in "the

indiscriminateness and incorrigibility of the behavioral tendency” it engenders (p. 171).

Paranoid cognition constitutes a prototypic example of such irrational distrust. If social

cognition is, as Kunda (1999) proposed, the study of how social perceivers “make sense"

of themselves and other people, then paranoid social cognition can be viewed as a

sensemaking process gone seriously awry.


Colby (1981) provided one of the first, and most complete descriptions of

paranoid cognition, characterizing them in terms of “persecutory delusions and false

beliefs whose propositional content clusters around ideas of being harassed, threatened,

harmed, subjugated, persecuted, accused, mistreated, wronged, tormented, disparaged,

vilified, and so on, by malevolent others, either specific individuals or groups" (p. 518,

emphases added). Subsequently, Robins and Post (1997) elaborated on this

characterization, noting that the essential cognitive components of paranoia include

suspicions “without sufficient basis, that others are exploiting, harming, or deceiving

them, preoccupations “with unjustified doubts about the loyalty, or trustworthiness, of

friends or associates,” and a reluctance “to confide in others because of unwarranted fear

that the information will be used maliciously against them” (p. 3).

Drawing on these general characterizations of paranoid cognition, organizational

paranoia can be defined as a form of heightened and exaggerated distrust that

encompasses an array of beliefs, such as organizational members’ perceptions of being

harassed, threatened, harmed, subjugated, persecuted, accused, mistreated, wronged,

tormented, disparaged, vilified, and so on, by malevolent others, either specific

individuals or groups within their organization. These perceptions include suspicions that

others are exploiting, harming, or deceiving one, along with preoccupations and doubts

about their loyalty or trustworthiness.

At the behavioral level, organizational paranoia is manifested in terms of a variety

of intendedly self-protective behaviors. The aim of these defensive behaviors is to

minimize the perceived risk of vulnerability or harm arising from misplaced trust (i.e.,

trusting the wrong people or trusting too much). Such behaviors include the reluctance to


confide in or self-disclose to other individuals in the organization, a hesitancy to engage

in spontaneous forms of cooperative behavior when interacting with other organizational

members, and avoidance of informal social contact (Kramer, 1994). Paranoid cognition

thus fosters both behavioral inhibition and social constriction.

Tracing the Origins of Organizational Paranoia

In trying to understand the origins of these rather peculiar, and in many respects,

quite striking cognitions, social scientists have turned most often to the clinical

psychology literature, invoking a panoply of psychodynamic constructs (Cameron, 1943;

Colby, 1975). Colby (1981), for example, posited that paranoid cognition was the end

product of a “causal chain of strategies for dealing with distress induced by the affect of

shame-humiliation” (p. 518). The strategy of blaming others for one’s difficulties, he

postulated, functions “to repudiate the belief that the self is to blame for an inadequacy”

(p. 518). Such conceptions presumed, it should be emphasized, that the primary causes of

paranoid cognition were located entirely “inside the head” of the social perceiver, rather

than somehow connected to the social context within which such cognitions were

embedded, and to which they might have reflected some sort of attempted adaptation (see

Footnote 3).

In contrast to these clinical conceptions, recent social psychological theory and

research has advanced a very different perspective on the nature of paranoid social

cognitions, and one that affords considerably more attention to their social and situational

origins. Research in this vein has taken as a starting point two suggestive observations.

The first observation is that, in milder forms, paranoid cognitions seem to be quite

prevalent even among normal individuals. As Fenigstein and Vanable (1992) commented


in this regard, it is not unusual for ordinary people “in their everday behavior [to]

manifest characteristics--such as self-centered thought, suspiciousness, assumptions of ill

will or hostility, and even notions of conspiratorial intent--that are reminiscent of

paranoia” (p. 130). There are many social occasions, they go on to note, where people

may think they are “being talked about or feel as if everything is going against them,

resulting in suspicion and mistrust of others, as though they were taking advantage of

them or to blame for their difficulties” (p. 133). On the basis of this evidence, Fenigstein

and Vanable concluded that the concept of paranoia needs to be broadened to “include

the thought processes that characterize everyday life” (p. 133).

The second observation pertains to the emergent and often transient nature of

these milder, more ordinary forms of paranoid cognition. As Robins and Post (1997)

observed colloquially, “Who among us, in reaction to a preemptory request to come

immediately to the front office, has not wondered, ‘What did I do now?’ ” (p. 3). Along

similar lines, Siegel (1994) commented that “almost everyone has had a mild experience

such as the vague suspicion that something is out there just waiting to get us . . . Many

people experience it when they are alone in the house at night or walk down an

unfamiliar street. Others may have the vague feeling that their life paths are being

jeopardized by jealous persons known and unknown” (p. 7). Findings from several

recent survey studies provide support for such observations, suggesting that paranoid-like

perceptions, including the perception that others are out to get one or that one has been

the victim of a conspiracy involving a romance, friendship, school or work are far from

uncommon (Butler, Koorman, and Zimbardo, 1995; Goertzel, 1994; Pew, 1996; Pipes,

1997; Melley, 2000).


These observations converge on two general propositions that are central to the

conceptual argument I wish to advance in this chapter. The first proposition is that these

more ordinary variants of paranoid cognition can be construed as forms of social

misperception better characterized by misplaced or exaggerated--rather than necessarily

false or delusional--distrust and suspicion of others. In this respect, such cognitions can

be construed as not unlike other forms of judgmental bias widely documented in the

social cognition literature (cf., Gilovich, 1991; Kunda, 1999). Second, as with other

forms of social misperception, paranoid cognitions can be viewed as the logical end

products of an interaction between the social information processing strategies social

perceivers use to make sense of perplexing or threatening situations they encounter, and

the features of the social contexts in which those perplexing or threatening situations

arise. Stated another way, these ordinary and more benign forms of paranoid cognition

can be viewed as intendedly adaptive coping responses to disturbing situations rather than

necessarily manifestations of disturbed individuals (see Footnote 4).

As I argue next, situations in organizational life characterized by sudden,

unexpected or persisting forms of social uncertainty constitute an important class of such

situations. To advance this argument, it is useful to elaborate on the relationship between

social uncertainty and the disruption of presumptive trust.

Social Uncertainty and the Disruption of Presumptive Trust

In many situations that arise in organizational life, trust in others is implicit,

having acquired over time a tacit or taken-for-granted quality (Fine & Holyfield, 1996;

Garfinkel, 1963). In routine transactions with other organizational members, for

example, trust is often conferred rather automatically: members both trust others with


whom they interact and expect to be trusted by them in return. As Brothers (1995) aptly

observed in this regard, “Trust rarely occupies the foreground of conscious awareness.

We are no more likely to ask ourselves how trusting we are at a given moment than we

are to inquire if gravity is still keeping the planets in orbit” (p. 3).

Within organizational settings, individuals are likely to experience this sort of

presumptive trust in others when they are confident or assured of their place in the social

order (Garfinkel, 1963). In a perceptive analysis of the role such certainty plays in social

relationships, Hogg and Mullin (1999) posited, "People have a fundamental need to feel

certain about their world and their place in it" (p. 253). Subjective certainty, they go on to

note, "gives one confidence about how to behave, and what to expect from the physical

and social environment within which one finds oneself (p. 253). Consistent with this

view, there is substantial evidence that, when social certainty is high, individuals

experience what Edmondson (1999) has aptly termed "psychological safety" when

relating to other members of a group or organization. This term, she emphasized, is

meant to suggest "neither a careless sense of permissiveness, nor an unrelentingly

positive affect but, rather, a sense of confidence that others will not embarrass, reject, or

punish someone for speaking up” (p. 354). On the basis of such certainty, individuals can

adopt a sort of diffuse or "depersonalized" (Brewer, 1981) trust in other organizational

members--both trusting others and expecting to be trusted in return (Kramer, Brewer, &

Hanna, 1996). In contrast, when individuals lack a sense of certainty regarding their

relationship with other group members, then such presumptive trust may not be so easily

or readily forthcoming. For such individuals, confidence in their footing in the social

landscape of the organization is less secure. In the absence of psychological safety, trust


acquires a more tenuous quality, and presumptive trust is replaced by presumptive

distrust and wariness.

A impressive body of theory and research can be adduced in support of this

general proposition that people experience social uncertainty as an aversive, threatening

psychological state and that they will work hard to reduce it (Ashford, 1989; Ashford &

Cummings, 1985; Baumeister, 1991; Baumeister & Tice, 1990; Frank, 1985; Hogg &

Mullin, 1999; Swann & Read, 1981). This proposition is supported, additionally, by

equally strong evidence regarding the deleterious effects of loss of social certainty on

psychological and interpersonal functioning, including the disruption of presumptive trust

in other people (e.g., Baumeister, Smart, & Boden, 1996; Baumeister & Tice, 1990;

Janoff-Bulman, 1992; Kramer, 1994; Zimbardo, Andersen, & Kabat, 1981).

Although indicative of a general relationship between social uncertainty and the

loss of trust in social settings, the question remains, “Under what conditions are

individuals likely to experience such social uncertainty in their intra-organizational

relations?” In particular, does social uncertainty contribute in any way to the

development of organizational paranoia? To develop answers to these questions, it is

useful to briefly examine an evocative study by Zimbardo, Andersen, and Kabat (1981).

When in Doubt: Perceiving and Coping with Social Uncertainty

Zimbardo, Andersen, and Kabat's (1981) now classic study on the origins of

social paranoia was inspired by a rather provocative, although at the time poorly

understood, clinical observation. Clinicians working within institutional settings had

often noted a correlation between gradual hearing loss and the onset of paranoid

cogitation. For example, it was noted that elderly hospitalized patients diagnosed as


paranoid often had significantly greater deafness compared to patients with other

affective disorders. Moreover, paranoid perceptions appeared to be more prevalent

among those hard-of-hearing individuals whose deafness had a gradual, and therefore

undiagnosed, onset and course.

Drawing on such observations, Zimbardo et al. theorized that when hearing loss is

unexpected and gradual, patients are likely to remain relatively oblivious of their hearing

loss and its impact on their social relationships. This leads to the emergence of paranoid-

like thinking as the hard-of-hearing individual tries to explain the “perceptual anomaly"

of not being able to hear what people around them are apparently saying (p. 1529).

Judging others around them to be whispering, the individual begins to ask, “About

what?” These initial responses by the hard-of-hearing person can be construed as

reasonable attempts to make sense of a discomforting, but apparently quite genuine,

social experience. Consistent with the view described earlier of social perceivers as

“social auditor” motivated to monitor and make sense of others’ behavior, the hard-of-

hearing person ponders, “Why are people suddenly whispering?” Such ruminations

inevitably turn self-ward: “Are they talking about me -- and, if so, why?”

Attempts to find an answer to this question are frustrated, however, by those

around the hard-of-hearing person, who vehemently deny they are whispering. As

Zimbardo et al. note, the persistent denial by others that they are whispering is likely to

be construed by the hard of hearing person as an intentional lie since it is so clearly at

odds with the evidence seemingly provided by their own senses. Thus, although intended

to be reassuring, these protestations of innocence by others that nothing is amiss only

spur the hard-of-hearing person to press more vigorously to find out what’s really going


on. This increasingly persistent behavior of the hard-of-hearing person creates, in turn, a

disconcerting sensemaking predicament for those around the hard-of-hearing person. As

Zimbardo et al. reason, “Without access to the perceptual data base of the person

experiencing the hearing disorder, [innocent bystanders and observers] judge these

responses to be bizarre instances of thought pathology” (p. 1529). As a consequence,

they actually do begin to whisper about the hard-of-hearing person, and do increasingly

shun them, as the persistent suspicions and increasingly aggressive accusations regarding

their alleged whispering become more and more upsetting.

These reciprocal misattributions, and the behaviors they engender, lead persons

experiencing hearing loss and those around them to become locked in a spiraling pattern

of mutual wariness and escalating hostility, punctuated by periodic social withdrawal. As

a consequence, “the individual experiences both isolation and loss of the corrective social

feedback essential for modifying false beliefs (p. 1529). The system assumes a life of its

own, becoming, as Zimbardo et al. (1981) aptly put it, a “self-validating, autistic system”

in which “delusions of persecution go unchecked” (p. 1529).

Zimbardo et al’s perceptive analysis of the evolution of social paranoia illustrates

just how readily the disruption of presumptive trust within a social group can occur when

situational or contextual factors weaken or tear an individual’s connection to other group

members. Construed broadly, and with some interpretive license, it also raises the

provocative question as to whether there might be similar dynamics at play in the

development of organizational forms of such paranoia. Are there, for example, social or

structural "equivalents" of the sensemaking predicament confronted by Zimbardo et al.’s

hard of hearing patients found within organizational settings? If so, what might they be?


Playfully engaging this question, I argue next, generates some useful insights into the

social and structural antecedents of organizational paranoia. In particular, I propose that

certain "locations" within organizations are especially likely to foster the sort of

delibitating social uncertainty experienced by Zimbardo et al.’s "hard of hearing"

patients, setting in motion a similar chain of cascading paranoid-like cogitation.

Organizational Analogues of the “Hard-of-Hearing" Dilemma

As Salancik and Pfeffer (1978) once noted, in order to explain human behavior, it

is essential to examine the “informational and social environment within which [that]

behavior occurs and to which it adapts” (p. 226). One reason context is so consequential,

they argued, is that it selectively directs individuals’ attention to certain information,

making that information more salient and thereby increasing its impact on their

expectations about and interpretations of both their own and others’ behavior. This

general social information processing argument has received substantial support from

both experimental research (e.g., Fenigstein & Vanable, 1992; Fiske, 1993; Fiske,

Morling, & Stevens, 1993; Taylor & Fiske, 1975; Vorauer & Ross, 1993) and field

research (e.g., Ashford & Cummings, 1985; Burt & Knez, 1995).

One implication of this social information processing perspective is that, when

trying to assess others’ trustworthiness, our intuitive social auditor’s efforts to monitor

and calibrate trustworthiness will be influenced by the particular features of the

organizational contexts within which such judgments are embedded. In particular, some

“locations” will facilitate such auditing, while others will sharpen constrain opportunities

to sample behaviors relevant to assessing such trustworthiness. In the following sections,

I review some of this evidence, using it to explicate a social information processing


perspective on the origins of organizational paranoia. In particular, I review several

streams of research that implicate some of the cognitive components and social

antecedents of organizational paranoia.

Social Uncertainty and Paranoia Within Hierarchical Relationships: Asymmetries in the

View from "Atop" and "Below"

Hierarchical relationships are obviously among the most important and prevalent

form of intra-organizational relationship. Among the hallmarks of such relationships are

significant asymmetries in power, status, access to information, and evaluative scrutiny

(Fox, 1974; Kanter, 1977a). From the standpoint of individuals located on the proverbial

“bottom” of such relationships (i.e., those who occupy positions of low power or status),

trust in those above them is critical because of their vulnerability and dependence. Those

on the bottom depend on those above them for a variety of important organizational

resources. These include tangible resources, such as promotions, pay increases, attractive

assignments, desirable office space, staff support, and other resources needed to get their

work done. They may also depend on those above them for less tangible, but no less

important psychological resources, such as positive reinforcement, mentoring, social

support, and empathy. At the same time, such trust is problematic because individuals in

such situations often experience considerable uncertainty about the extent to which those

above them genuinely care about them and support them behind their back. In other

words, it is hard to know with confidence how they are regarded and where they stand in

their relationship. As a result of these uncertainties, individuals in such subordinate roles

lack precisely the kinds of information that is crucial for making informed judgments

about the trustworthiness of those on whom they depend.


The hierarchical relationship between graduate students and their faculty advisors

embodies many of these dilemmas of trust. The doctoral experience unfolds in a social

context that embodies high levels of perceived evaluative scrutiny (Zanna & Darley,

1987; Taylor & Martin, 1987; Kramer & Martin, 1995). Graduate students progressing

towards the doctoral degree are dependent on their faculty advisors for a variety of

critical resources, including financial support, opportunities for co-authorship on

scholarly papers, letters of recommendation, and approval of their dissertation research.

They rely on their advisors to serve as advocates in departmental meetings in which they

are evaluated, and hope they will buffer them from departmental politics that might

otherwise adversely affect their graduate careers. Moreover, they depend upon their

faculty members for many less tangible, although not less important, psychological

resources, such as intellectual encouragement and emotional support. All of these

dependencies, and the perceived vulnerabilities associated with them, are embedded in a

highly evaluative interpersonal and institutional context.

For all of these reasons, the relationship between graduate students and their

faculty advisors provides a rich context in which to investigate the cognitive

underpinnings and judgmental consequences of paranoid social cognition within a

hierarchical organizational context. Accordingly, I recruited doctoral candidates and their

faculty advisors for a study ostensibly concerned with social perception and interpersonal

behavior in collaborative research relationships (see Kramer, 1996 for a more complete

description of the methods and findings). In actuality, the primary focus of the study was

perceptions of trustworthiness in these relationships. Twenty-six individuals (thirteen

students and their faculty advisors) volunteered for the study. To produce the raw data


for this study, autobiographical narratives were generated by asking students and their

faculty advisors to recall and describe all of the significant incidents and behaviors that

had occurred between them and that they felt affected the level of trust in their

relationship (see Footnote 5). The twenty-six narratives produced in this fashion provided

detailed developmental trust “histories” for the thirteen dyads.

These histories were impressive in terms of both the variety and range of trust-

related behaviors they encompassed. To get a deeper understanding of these narratives,

the data in these accounts were first analyzed in terms of the frequency of behaviors and

incidents that respondents identified as having critically influenced the development of

trust or distrust in their relationship. The first set of theoretical expectations I examined

pertained to the hypothesized implications of heightened vigilance of those in the more

vulnerable or dependent position in the relationship. Because of their greater dependence

and vulnerability, I expected that trust concerns would be more consequential for students

and that, consequently, they would evince greater vigilance about detecting and

processing trust-relevant information.

One implication of this heightened scrutiny and vigilance is that graduate students

will develop more elaborate and differentiated “mental accounting” systems for tracking

and coding trust-related transactions. According to this cognitive elaboration hypothesis,

students would be expected to be able to recall more trust-related incidents and behaviors

compared to their superordinate counterparts. The results of the study support this

hypothesis. Students recalled significantly more behaviors and incidents that they

construed as having impacted the level of perceived trust in their relationship compared

to faculty members. This pattern of findings, it should be noted, parallel recent arguments


by Fiske (1993) that people are vigilant and careful information processors when they

need to be, but often rely on stereotypes and other poorly articulated schemata of others

when they can get away with it. “The powerless need to try to predict and possibly alter

their own fates” (p. 624). This general conclusion is supported also by imaginative and

provocative work on asymmetries in victim-perpetrator accounts and memories

(Baumeister, Stillwell, & Wotman, 1990; Stillwell & Baumeister, 1997).

Additional analyses revealed several other patterns of interest. First, students and

faculty both tended to recall more things the other person had done that had adversely

impacted the level of trust between them, compared to things they had done, consistent

with self-serving recall biases observed in other studies (e.g., Messick & Sentis, 1983),

but the tendency was significantly greater among students. Thus, trust-building is

arguably more fragile and easily disrupted for them.

Based upon other research (Spranca, Minsk, & Baron, 1991), I expected that there

might also be differences in the salience (availability in memory) of acts of commission

versus omission, especially as a function of the perceivers’ position in the relationship. In

other words, because students are more dependent and vigilant, they will “pay” more

attention both to things done and not done. To evaluate this expectation, the data were

coded in terms of whether the trust-relevant incidents or behaviors that students and

faculty described reflected something the focal actor had actually done (an act of

commission) versus something they had failed to do (an act of omission). With respect to

the domain of trust-decreasing incidents, significantly more acts of omission than acts of

commission were described in student narratives compared to those of their faculty.

Thus, failures of action seemed to be especially salient to students. Stated differently,


students "noticed" (or cognitively coded) many more things that their faculty advisors

failed to do compared to their faculty counterparts.

If students are motivated to pay greater attention to their faculty’s behavior than

their faculty are motivated to pay to them, then it seems reasonable to argue also that acts

of omission and comission might invoke especially intense ruminative activity among

students. Because of their greater dependence and vulnerability, perceived violations of

trust are not only likely to loom larger (be more salient), but also prompt more

retrospective sensemaking activity for students. If this interpretation is correct,

differential evidence of such tendencies should emerge in respondents’ estimates of how

much time they spend thinking about such behaviors, incidents, and/or their relationship

in general. Student and faculty estimates of the time they spent ruminating about the

relationship support this conjecture. Specifically, students reported ruminating

significantly more than faculty.

A comparison of respondents' estimates of the amount of time they spent

ruminating about their relationship and their predictions regarding their counterpart’s

rumination suggested, moreover, a strong pattern of ego-centric projection (Goethals,

1986). Specifically, students’ estimates of faculty member's ruminative activity tended to

be anchored on estimates of their own rumination, causing them to overestimate the

amount of time their faculty spend thinking about them. Conversely, faculty estimates of

students’ ruminative activity appeared to be anchored on the amount of time they report

ruminating about the relationship, causing them, in effect, to underestimate the extent to

which students are ruminating about the relationship. These data thus provide suggestive,

even if somewhat indirect, indications of students' paranoid-like perceptions of the degree


to which they are under evaluative scrutiny even when not in the presence of faculty:

although they may be out of sight, students seldom think they are completely out of their

advisors’ minds.

This initial study serves as a documentation of some of the cognitive

underpinnings of asymmetries in the processing of trust-related information tied to

individuals' comparative position or location within their organizational relationships.

Much like Zimbardo et al.’s hard-of-hearing patients, those on the proverbial bottom of a

hierarchical relationship can easily come to think and feel that those above them are

always figuratively whispering about them behind their back. But are there other

circumstances in organizations that produce similar dynamics? Another factor that can

contribute to the development of organizational paranoia, I argue next, is the perception

of being a socially distinctive or atypical organizational member.

Perceived Social Distinctiveness, Social Uncertainty, and Paranoid Cognition

Perceptions of social distinctiveness reflect the relationship between individuals’

social identities and those who surround them. All human beings possess membership in

multiple social identity groups. As a consequence, people can categorize themselves--

and be categorized by others--in a variety of different ways. These include

categorizations based upon physical attributes (such as age, race, or gender), as well as

categorizations based upon social attributes such as religion, social class; and

organizational identities.

Recognizing their importance, researchers have afforded a great deal of attention

in recent years to exploring how such social categorization processes influence social

perception and behavior within social systems (e.g., Kanter, 1977a; Tsui, Egan, &


O’Reilly, 1992; Turner, 1987; Wharton, 1992). Several conclusions emerge from such

research. First, social categories influence how individuals define themselves in a given

social situation, a process that Turner (1987) characterized as self categorization.

Specifically, research on self categorization has shown that individuals often categorize

themselves in terms of those attributes that happen to be distinctive or unique in a given

setting (Cota & Dion, 1986; Kanter, 1977a,b; Swan & Wyer, 1997; Taylor, 1981). For

example, if an individual is the only female member of a group, her distinctive gender

status may be afforded disproportionate emphasis when she tries to explain her own

behavior and the reactions of others to it. From a cognitive standpoint, the distinctiveness

of this category makes gender-based attributes more available during social information

processing. As a result, distinctive categories tend to “loom larger” during social

interaction, influencing the social inferences made by both actor and observer (Taylor,

Fiske, Etcoff, & Ruderman, 1978).

Extrapolating from such evidence, it can be argued that individuals who belong to

distinctive social categories are likely, all else equal, to be feel greater uncertainty and

more self-conscious than those belonging to less socially distinctive categories. Because

they feel that they are different from others or "stand out" in the group, they tend to

overestimate the extent to which they are under evaluative scrutiny by other group

members. This argument that self-categorization on the basis of distinctive or

exceptional status can contribute to the perception of being under evaluative scrutiny and

dysphoric self-consciousness is consistent with a considerable body of evidence

regarding the cognitive and social consequences of merely “being different” from other

members of a social group (Brewer, 1991; Kanter, 1977a,b; Tsui, Egan, & O’Reilly,


1992; Taylor, 1981). Such evidence suggests that such distinctiveness is often

experienced, moreover, as an aversive state (Frable, Blackstone & Scherbaum, 1990;

Lord & Saenz, 1985). As Brewer (1991) noted along these lines, “being highly

individuated leaves one vulnerable to isolation and stigmatization” (p. 478)..

In social information processing terms, one consequence of individuals’

uncertainty derived from simply feeling “being different” from others is that it prompts

intense sensemaking activity. We might expect such sense-making activitiy to be

especially pronounced when individuals are uncertain about precisely how much “being

different” from others really matters (e.g., its impact on whether they will be accepted by

others and the kind of treatment they will receive from them). In many respects, so-

called "token" members of social systems exemplify this quandry. Token status in

groups is based upon “ascribed characteristics (master statuses such as sex, race, religion,

ethnic group, age, etc.) or other characteristics that carry with them a set of assumptions

about culture, status, and behavior that are highly salient for majority category members”

(Kanter, 1977b, p. 966).

In her now classic discussions of the effects of token status on social perception

and interpersonal relations, Kanter (1977a,b) noted that individuals who are members of

token categories are likely to attract disproportionate attention from other groups

members, particularly those who enjoy dominant status in terms of their greater

numerical proportion. For example, she argued that females in many American

corporations often feel as if they are in the "limelight" compared to their more numerous

male counterparts. In support of these observations, Taylor (1981) demonstrated that

observers often do allocate disproportionate amounts of attention to individuals who have


token status in groups, especially when making attributions about group processes and

outcomes. Lord and Saenz (1985) subsequently provided an important extension of this

early work by showing how token status affects the cognitive processes of tokens

themselves. Based on their findings, they concluded that, “Tokens feel the social

pressure of imagined audience scrutiny, and may do so even when the ‘audience’ of

majority group members treat them no differently from nontokens” (p. 919).

On the basis of such evidence, it can be argued that individuals who have token

status in a social system will be more self-conscious and perceive themselves to be under

evaluative scrutiny to a greater extent than nontoken members. As a consequence, tokens

will tend to overestimate the extent to which they are the targets of other’s attention.

Relatedly, they will be more likely to overconstrue their interactions with other group

members--especially interactions involving nontokens--in personalistic, self-referential

terms. Evidence in support of this overly personalistic construal of social interaction

hypothesis was provided in a study of social perception among incoming Masters of

Business Administration (MBA) students at a major business school during the first term

of their two-year program (Kramer, 1994). The MBA classes at most business schools

are highly competitive groups. For example, individuals within these groups generally

care a great deal about their relative standing or “positional status” (cf., Frank, 1985) with

respect to their academic performance. At the same time, they also care a great deal

about their social standing in the group. In particular, students attach considerable value

to “fitting in” well and being accepted by the group (in part because they believe that they

are forming life-long associations, and that their classmates represent a potentially


invaluable network of several hundred “future contacts” on which they will draw

throughout their professional life).

From the standpoint of shaping how individuals’ construe their token or nontoken

status, business schools are interesting organizations also because, rather than conceal or

deemphasize social category-based information, such information is highlighted and

actively disseminated. At the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, for

example, detailed statistics as to the proportional representation of numerous social

categories within the group are e-mailed to each incoming MBA student. The "diversity"

of the group is a central topic during the formal orientation and socialization process. The

group’s diversity is frequently showcased as a theme in discussions about the

organizational culture. Thus, individuals are bombarded with precise information about

how typical they are along a variety of categorical distinctions, including their age,

gender, the prestige of the undergraduate institutions they attended, and the status of the

employers for whom they worked just prior to coming to business school.

Ostensibly, all of this information is provided to students in order to document

and foster appreciation for the impressive level of diversity within the group, a

characteristic that is highly valued by the organizational culture. Its psychological and

social impact, however, may go beyond these noble institutional motives. For example,

publicity about diversity also unintendedly draws attention to, and heightens the salience

of, these categorical distinctions--especially for those individuals who happen to be

statistically “deviant” from the population means. As a consequence, categorical outlyers

may feel less certain about where they stand in the social order. They both notice how

they are being treated—and, equally important, may feel especially noticed.


Because of this heightened vigilance and self-consciousness, they are more likely to

experience a more paranoid style of social perception and attribution compared to their

nontoken counterparts. This general idea was evaluated by comparing the level of

paranoid cognition among tokens and nontokens within the MBA culture. Token status

was defined in terms of several dimensions: gender, race, sexual orientation, and age.

Specifically, the “token” sample included black male, black female, “openly” gay

students, and unusually old and young students within the first-year MBA population.

The nontoken comparison group consisted of white male students.

To assess the levels of trust and distrust within these two groups, data were

collected on a variety of measures, including individuals’ level of perceived social

certainty and uncertainty, self-consciousness, level of social discomfort, perceived status,

and trust and distrust in the group. Several findings from this study are particularly

noteworthy. First, with respect to their self-perceptions, token group members reported

significantly higher levels of social uncertainty and self-consciousness compared to their

nontoken counterparts, both in classroom discussions and in social gatherings outside of

class. They also felt less comfortable raising and discussing personal issues compared to

nontokens. Moreover, they perceived themselves as fitting less well into the MBA

culture compared to nontokens.

As a second source of data, I used an event recall procedure, similar to that used

in the graduate student-faculty study described above, to elicit information regarding how

tokens’ construed their trust-related interactions with other group members. These data

were generated by asking MBAs to recall and briefly describe any and all experiences

they could think of that had in any way adversely affected their level of trust in either a


particular group member, or the group as a whole. The results are interesting in several

respects. First, tokens recalled significantly more instances of behaviors they felt had

adversely affected their trust in the group compared to nontokens. Inspection of these

lists reveal that the kinds of behaviors tokens construed as violations of trust were often

related to behaviors that appeared to call into question or invalidate their perceived

standing in the group. For example, one student described an incident where another

student “didn’t bother to return a phone call to me during finals week.” Similarly,

another noted that other students “ignored me at a party."

As a way of assessing differences in the seeming paranoia of tokens' and

nontokens' construal of their social interactions, second-year MBA students, who were

blind to the purpose of the study, were asked to read these recall lists and evaluate the

person who made the list along a number of dimensions. Raters knew only that they

were reading the accounts of new MBA students about their first-year experience in the

program. They were asked to form a global impression of the person who had generated

the list. They were asked to rate also, along with a variety of other measures, the general

level of “paranoia” of the person, using as a guideline the definition of paranoid cognition

presented earlier in this paper.

Several noteworthy results emerged from this procedure. First, tokens were rated

as angrier, more unhappy, and less trusting than nontokens. They were also more likely

to be rated as “whiners,” “ complainers” and “social losers" (defined as “people who just

naturally seem to have trouble fitting in”) compared to nontokens. Most importantly,

they were viewed as significantly more paranoid. These results suggest how social

observers may make fairly harsh judgments about others’ cognitions and perceptions


when the social context and interactional histories that give rise to those cognitions are

not readily available or weighted appropriately.

In putting these results in perspective, it is important to highlight several points.

First, although the data reveal a consistent pattern of difference between the construals of

token and nontoken group members that is in accord with the theoretical expectation, it is

necessary to emphasize that the claim here is not that tokens’ perceptions of being “over

observed” or treated differently are necessarily and/or completely in error. Previous

theory and research would lead one to expect that, in all likelihood, the behaviors of these

tokens are scrutinized more intently and that they are treated differently than other group

members. But, it is important to note, it is logically possible for individuals to both

actually be disproportionately observed relative to other group members and at the same

time to overestimate the extent to which they are being overobserved. In other words, the

perceptions of tokens may contain a "kernel of truth" and yet still reflect a systematic

cognitive bias or distortion. Similarly, it is possible for nontokens to actually pay more

attention, or afford different kinds of attention, to tokens and to nonetheless

systematically underestimate such overattention. In conjunction, these two biases lead to

a “spreading apart” of their estimates of social scrutiny and beliefs about the social reality

obtaining between them. The fragility of trust in such situations thus derives, it should be

noted, not only from the token’s social uncertainty, but also the uncertainty for nontokens

about how to treat the token and how to act around them.

It should also be emphasized that the argument here is not that all individuals in

token roles in organizations experience paranoid cognitions, or that token status per se

leads to paranoid cognition. For example, individuals whose token status is predicated


upon more positive social stereotypes may view the disproportionate attention they attract

as a positive form of social distinctiveness in the group. Consistent with this point, one

young female Japanese MBA student in the study sample felt that she received extra

“social credits” for her status. Because she was Japanese, rather petite, and quite soft-

spoken, she felt people assumed she was not only exceptionally bright, but also modest,

sincere, hardworking, and a good team player. But she still felt as if she were regarded

specially and treated differently because of her gender and race. Even excelling on

positively valued dimensions, as Brewer (1991) noted, generates the perception of social

distance and fear of potential rejection. Thus, whether one “basks” or “bakes” in the

limelight of others’ perceived scrutiny clearly depends upon how they construe their

distinctiveness and the kind of social attention it is perceived to invite.

Social Uncertainty and the Sinister Attribution Error: Paranoia Among Organizational

Newcomers

Another factor that can contribute to social uncertainty and the onset of

situationally-induced paranoia is an individual’s status with respect to their tenure in a

social system. There are several reasons why tenure status--defined as the length of time

an individual has been a member of a group or organization--might be correlated with

their susceptibility to paranoid social cognitions. First, newcomers to a group are likely to

have greater uncertainty and insecurity regarding their standing in the group. Because

their place in the social order is still being negotiated, they are likely to be concerned

with such things as how well they will fit into the group’s culture, and also whether or not

they will be accepted by other group members. They may be anxious as well about how

well they will perform in their expected roles. As a result of such uncertainties,


newcomers are likely to be relatively self-conscious during their social interactions.

They may, consequently, experience a form of intra-group anxiety akin to, and no less

distressing than, the sort of inter-group anxiety described by Stephan and Stephan (1985).

For them, life is not déjà vu, but as Weick (1995) aptly put it, vuje de.

In contrast, as tenure increases, individuals gain considerable information

regarding their standing in a group. As experienced group members, they become

knowledgable about, and comfortable with, group norms and routines. In effect, such

“oldtimers” know where they stand because they have successfully negotiated their place

in the group or organization (cf., Fine & Holyfield, 1996; Moreland, 1985; Moreland &

Levine, 1989). As a result, their uncertainty--and the social anxieties that attend such

uncertainty--are likely to be relatively low.

Because their social uncertainty, and the motivation to reduce it, are both high,

newcomers to a group should, all else equal, be fairly vigilant and proactive when

seeking diagnostic information regarding their standing (Ashford, 1986, 1989; Ashford &

Cummings, 1985; Morrison, 1993). Accordingly, they will find salient, and actively

process, information about how they are treated during their interactions and exchanges

with other members as clues to their standing in the group.

From an attributional standpoint, unfortunately, the diagnostic value of such

information is often problematic because the correct construal or interpretation of many

social interactions among group members is often ambiguous, and especially so for

newcomers. The cause of another person’s behavior is almost always subject to multiple

interpretations, making the attribution process quite difficult even for the most motivated

intuitive scientist. For example, the fact that a faculty colleague in a university


department fails to say hello to another faculty member as they pass each other in the

hallway on a Monday morning may reflect a personalistic cause (the colleague is angry at

the faculty member for something said or did at the last faculty meeting). However, there

are also many nonpersonalistic causes that can be invoked to explain this same behavior

(e.g., he was preoccupied by a particularly nasty faculty meeting earlier that morning and

did not even notice the other person as they passed each other).

From the perspective of normative attribution models, individuals should discount

the validity of any particular explanation for another person's behavior when multiple,

competing explanations for that behavior are available (Kelley, 1973; Morris & Larrick,

1995). Thus, even when individuals suspect they are the target or cause of another’s

behavior, they should discount this personalistic attribution until more conclusive

evidence is available. However, as already noted, and despite the logical

inappriopriateness of doing so, people often make overly personalistic attributions of

others’ actions even when competing explanations for those actions are readily available

(Fenigstein, 1979; Fenigstein & Vanable, 1992; Greenwald, 1980; Vorauer & Ross,

1993). Extrapolating from this research, it might be expected that newer members of an

organization will be, all else equal, more self-conscious and more likely to construe their

interactions with other organizational members in overly personalistic terms, especially

compared to those with longer tenure in the group.

This tendency may be especially pronounced, moreover, with respect to unequal

status interactions (i.e., interactions between lower and higher status group members),

because such interactions will be particularly salient to newcomers, and processed more

intensively by them. For example, because of their greater evaluative anxiety, to the


newly hired assistant professor in a department, interactions involving senior colleagues

will be more noticeable and processed more extensively than comparable interactions

with other assistant professors. Thus, an ambiguous act such as passing one by in the

hallway without saying hello may be attributed to simple rudeness, arrogance, or social

awkwardness if done by another new assistant professor. The same behavior by a senior

colleague, however, may be construed more ominously as evidence that the person

doesn’t like one or did not one’s hiring in the first place. According to this logic, the

tendency to make overly personalistic attributions about anothers' behavior should be

particularly pronounced with respect to interactions involving newcomers and those with

longer tenure.

Support for this sinister attribution bias or error was provided in a recent study

(Kramer, 1994) using a vignette methodology similar to that employed by Fenigstein

(1984) but adapted to an organizational context. Participants in this study were all MBA

students from the Stanford Business School. They were told they would be participating

in a study that was concerned with how MBAs perceive their interactions with other

MBAs within the school. They were asked to read a series of eight vignettes, each of

which described a hypothetical interaction between the participant in the study and

another MBA. In each vignette, study participants found themselves in the role of

‘target’ of a transgression which called into question their standing or which entailed a

potential violation of trust. The status of the perpetrator in the scenarios was varied, so

that in half the experimental conditions the offense was committed by a first-year MBA

student, and in the other half it was committed by a second-year student. For example, in

one vignette, students were asked to imagine the following situation, “You are having


lunch with a group of first- and second- year students that you have just met. You are

telling a joke that you consider quite funny. Suddenly, right in the middle of your telling

the joke, one of the [first/second] year students in the group gets up and leaves.”

For each vignette, two explanations for the perpetrator’s behavior were provided.

One explanation suggested a personalistic (target-relevant) attribution, implying the

perpetrator’s behavior was intentional and directed at the target. For example, it was

suggested that the reason the student stood up and left is that he or she “thought your joke

was uninteresting.” The other suggested a nonpersonalistic (target-irrelevant) attribution.

For example, it was stated the reason the person got up and left is that he or she

“suddenly remembered they had an appointment.”

Paranoid social cognition was assessed by comparing individuals’ judgments

regarding the plausibility of the personalistic versus nonpersonalistic attributions for the

perpetrator’s behavior. Analysis of these data revealed a number of effects supportive of

the theoretical expectations. First, there was a main effect for tenure of target, such that

first year students were significantly more likely to make personalistic attributions

regarding a perpetrator’s behavior compared to second year students. More importantly,

a significant interaction between target and perpetrator tenure was also observed.

Specifically, first year students were particularly likely to make personalistic attributions

when the perpetrator was a second year student compared to when the perpetrator was

another first year student. In contrast, second year students’ attributions reflected little

sensitivity to the tenure of the perpetrator.

In further support of the argument, correlations revealed that newcomers were

more self-conscious on average than second years. Additionally, first-year students who


scored high on a scale measuring dispositional public self-consciousness were more

likely to make overly personalistic attributions compared to those scoring low on the

scale.

Technologies That Foster Organizational Paranoia: The Fragile Trust Between Auditors

and Those They Audit

Another factor that can contribute to the development of organizational paranoia

is the use of technologies to monitor employee behavior. Organizations typically adopt

such technological remedies when doubts about employee trustworthiness are present or

in the hope of deterring anticipated untrustworthy behavior. Enthusiasm over such

remedies to managerial trust problems has been considerable, as evidenced by the rapid

infusion into the workplace of surveillance systems and f electronic monitoring of

employee performance. For example, according to Aiello (1993), over 70,000 U. S.

companies purchased surveillance software between 1990-1992, at a cost of more than

$500 million dollars.

Although reliable data regarding the overall impact and efficacy of these systems

is still hard to come by, there is some evidence that such systems can foster paranoid-like

reactions among employees. Ironically, they may even elicit the vary behaviors they are

intended to suppress or eliminate. In a recent discussion of this evidence, Cialdini (1996)

identified several reasons why monitoring and surveillance can disrupt trust within an

organization. First, when people think their behavior is under the control of extrinsic

motivators, their intrinsic motivation to engage in that behavior may be reduced. Thus,

surveillance may actually undermine individuals’ willingness to engage in the very kinds

of more trustworthy behaviors such monitoring is intended to induce or ensure. For


example, some organizations have begun to use compulsory polygraphs, drug testing, and

other forms of mass screening to deter such behavior. Innocent employees forced to

undergo these procedures, however, may become less committed to internal standards of

honesty and integrity in the workplace, even though they may have never used drugs or

cheated. Moreover, honest employees may begin to assume there must be a problem with

others’ trustworthiness. After all, why would a company be spending thousands of

dollars on surveillance if there wasn’t a problem? Thus, although intended to detect or

deter the few who might cheat, such systems unintendedly weaken beliefs about

collective trustworthiness within the organization.

Cialdini (1996) has noted also that monitoring and surveillance systems

communicate to employees that they are not trusted, which potentially breeds mistrust

and resentment in return. Thus, individuals may begin to be suspicious about those

implementing such systems. What are they after? Why don’t they trust us? Does that tell

us something about their view of human nature? Monitoring systems designed to improve

the quality and reliability of service can also foster paranoia. For example, Hochschild

(1983) described how fear of monitoring adversely impacted organizational trust and

customer service among flight attendants at a major airlines. The airline implemented a

policy whereby passengers were encouraged to provide feedback about the quality of

flight attendant service by writing letters to the company. From the Flight Attendant's

perspective, no matter how justified or unjustified the complaint, such letters would

automatically be placed in their file. The resultant climate of resentment and suspicion

created by this policy was further intensified because flight attendants feared that

“passengers” they were serving might not even really be passengers at all. Instead, they


might be airline supervisors working undercover to monitor their performance. Thus, a

system intended to produce more trustworthy (reliable) and friendly service encounters

unintendedly produced fearful, suspicious ones.

Other recent evidence suggests that the corrosive effects of surveillance extend to

those who are actually doing the surveillance, breeding a form of supervisor paranoia

about those they watch. Several studies have shown, for example, that the act of

surveillance increases surveillant distrust over those they monitor (Kruglanski 1970,

Strickland 1958). This finding usually has been explained in terms of self-perception

theory. According to self-perception theory, peoples’ attitudes and beliefs are often

shaped by observations of their own behavior. Thus, if I find myself watching others for

signs of untrustworthiness, I may come to believe that people in the organization

obviously need to be watched (after all, why would I be investing so much time and

energy in watching them if watching them wasn't necessary or prudent?). Moreover, I

may come to the conclusion my surveillance is working, even when in fact it is having no

effect at all. If I detect no one cheating, I might infer that my surveillance has

successfully deterred the temptation to cheat. Note that the rival hypothesis that no

cheating would have occurred even without monitoring is less likely to seem plausible,

given the “base-rate” suspicion that monitoring is needed.

Less obvious, but no less insidious in terms of their consequences, are the

behaviors that surveillants are less likely to engage in when surveillance and other

substitutes for trust are utilized in organizations. When managers rely on technological

solutions to reduce their uncertainty about others' trustworthiness, they may stop doing

other things, such as taking other more constructive measures to assess and build trust. As


one executive who had implemented a computer monitoring system called Overview

mused, “If I didn’t have the Overview, I would walk around and talk to people more . . . I

would be more interested in what people are thinking about” (quoted in Kipnis 1996, p.

331). Thus, systems intended to guarantee trust may, ironically, prevent it from building.

They not only make it more difficult for employees to demonstrate their trustworthiness,

but also for managers to detect or discern that trustworthiness.

Once in Doubt, Always in Doubt: The Self-Sustaining and Self-Entrapping Character of

Paranoid Social Cognition

All else equal, it might seem as if the various misperceptions and judgmental

distortions described thusfar would be rather difficult for social perceivers to sustain.

After all, as noted earlier in this paper, there is a considerable body of empirical research

suggesting that, when making judgments about others’ trustworthiness, people tend to be

fairly vigilant social auditors, paying close attention to others' behavior and mindfully

evaluating that evidence for signs of trustworthiness or its absence. From the standpoint

of such research, even if we can understand the initial circumstances that give rise to

paranoid cognitions, we might expect such misperceptions and judgmental errors to be

self-correcting over time. For example, as individuals acquire evidence that their fears

and suspicions regarding other organizational members turn out to be exaggerated or

groundless, those fears and suspicions should diminish. Perceptions, in other words,

should eventually converge on reality. Yet, in contrast to this expectation, paranoid

perceptions seem to enjoy what Pruitt (1987) aptly characterized as a “flinty” persistence.

The persistence of such perceptual errors invites consideration of some of the

dynamics that help create and sustain them. Research suggests a number of cognitive,


behavioral, and social dynamics that may contribute to the resilience of paranoid

cognition in organizations. These self-sustaining and self-entrapping characteristics of

paranoid perceptual systems reflect two difficulties that suspicious social perceivers

routinely confront. The first pertains to the paranoid perceiver’s difficulty in generating

usefully evidence for making judgments about others’ trustworthiness. The second

concerns difficulties such perceivers have in trying to learn from those experiences they

do generate. As I will suggest, the paranoid social auditor is neither good at collecting

data or drawing the right lessons from it.

Difficulties in Generating Trust-relevant Experience

As with other forms of social learning, learning about others’ trustworthiness

requires amassing relevant evidence regarding others’ trustworthiness, and extracting

reasonable inferences and generalizations from that evidence. For example, in order to

learn the true prevalence or distribution of trustworthiness within a given population,

individuals must sample widely and representatively from that population. Put another

way, individuals must have both sufficient and representative personal experiences with

social trust in order to generate veridical or faithful theories about other people’s

trustworthiness.

To generate such experiences, individuals must be willing to engage in

appropriate forms of risky “experiments” with respect to trusting others. They must then

monitor the consequences of those experiments in order to probe the limits or boundaries

of trust (Hardin, 1992). Obviously, individuals are most likely to engage in such

experiments in situations where they hope for or expect a positive payoff. However, such

experiments in risk-taking require that individuals expose themselves to both the prospect


of misplaced trust and misplaced distrust. In any words, one must be willing to be risk-

tolerant enough to experience mistakes in both directions. Any systematic bias in the

generation of experimental data samples runs the danger of leading to a skewed or

truncated portrait of the distribution, pushing individuals toward inferences riddled with

one of two errors (too much trust or too little). As Hardin (1992) and Gambetta (1988)

have argued along these lines, differences between low and high trusters’ ex ante

presumptions about others’ trustworthiness (or lack of trustworthiness) can differentially

impact the frequency with which they are likely to generate these crucial learning

opportunities. As Gambetta (1988) noted, distrust is very difficult to invalidate through

experience, because it “prevents people from engaging in the appropriate kind of social

experiment” (p. 234, emphasis added). Moreover, he argues, “it leads to behavior which

bolsters the validity of distrust itself” (p. 234). As a consequence, presumptive distrust

tends to become perpetual distrust. Findings from computer simulations (Bendor,

Kramer, & Stout, 1991) and laboratory experiments (Fenigstein & Vanable, 1992;

Kramer, 1994) support this argument.

An instructive parallel to this argument can be found in research on the dynamics

of the development and persistence of patterns of hostile attribution among aggressive

children (Dodge, 1985). Such children, Dodge found, tend to approach social

interactions “pre-offended.” They enter social transactions with a state of heightened

vigilance and prepared for the worst in their social encounters. Because of this stance,

they end up, ironically, eliciting through their own pre-emptive and defensive behaviors

the very outcomes they most dread. In much the same fashion as these overly aggressive

boys, the paranoid perceiver is perceptually vigilant to detecting signs of lack of


trustworthiness in others. They are prepared for the prospect of trust abuses and prone, as

a result, to code even ambiguous encounters as further evidence of tainted

trustworthiness. Because the paranoid perceiver’s behavior is grounded in presumptive

wariness, it ends up eliciting the very sort of uncomfortable, distant interactions that

reinforce mutual or reciprocated wariness, suspicion and discomfort. Thus, a dubious set

of assumptions and nagging doubts serve as a foundation for an equally questionable set

of social strategies for dealing with them.

Along related lines, Gilovich (1991) has elaborated another reason why people

may be able to sustain beliefs in questionable beliefs and counter-productive

interpersonal influence strategies. Because a given social orientation or strategy is

initially thought to be effective, he notes, only that orientation or strategy is likely to be

employed when similar-seeming situations are encountered. As a consequence, a person

never learns what would have happened had a different interpretation of the situation

given or approach taken. As a consequence, the individual cannot (or, more accurately,

simply does not) assess either the true adaptiveness of the orientation or effectiveness of

the strategy it seems to dictate.

This pattern of dysfunctional social interaction can be aided and abetted, Gilovich

goes on to note, by a self-fulfilling prophecy. Like someone who believes that the only

way to get ahead is to be competitive or come on strong when dealing with other people,

such a person will consistently push too aggressively for what he or she wants. The

occasional success will “prove” the wisdom of the rule, and the individual never learns,

as a result, that an alternative strategy might have been even more effective. As Gilovich

noted further, “Because no single failure serves to disconfirm the strategy’s effectiveness


(after all, nothing works all the time), the only way it can be shown to be ineffective is by

discovering that the rate of success is lower with this strategy than with others” (p. xx).

Given that alternative strategies are not employed and their consequences not

systematically evaluated, the person never discovers the strategy they are using is sub-

optimal, or that the theory behind it in error. Equally important, they never come to

realize that the model of self, others, and the world on which the rule is predicated is in

error. As Kelley and Schmidt (1989) noted in an analysis of the dynamics of overly

aggressive boys, “with their apparent belief that persistence in coercion finally works,

aggressive boys are likely to develop sustained exchanges of aggression,” fully believing

their experiences bears out the necessity for such belief (p. 256).

In elaborating on this idea, it should be emphasized also that, because of their

other-focused orientation, paranoid perceivers are also unlikely to discern how their own

actions end up eliciting behavior from others that ironically sustain and justify their view

that the world around them as populated by unreliable and untrustworthy others. An

analogy can be drawn, in this regard, with the experience of freeway drivers who are

either much faster than, or much slower than, other drivers in their environment.

Consider the case first of the very fast driver. For these extremely impatient, hurried,

time-urgent drivers, the daily experience on the freeway is one of persistent annoyance

and frustration as countless slow, incompetent drivers are continually found to be in their

way. Each press of the pedal and each lane change generates yet another interaction with

yet another incompetently slow and inconsiderate driver, thwarting their progress and

hindering them from reaching their destination in a timely fashion. Over time, such

drivers are likely to develop a view of the world as populated by terrible drivers. On


average, their experience is that the people around them are bad (overly cautious, stupid,

etc.) drivers relative to their own beliefs about efficient and prudent driving speeds.

Consider, on the other hand, the experience of the very slow and extremely cautious

driver navigating on the same freeways. From the standpoint of these drivers everyone

else on the freeway seems always to be in a hurry. Other drivers aggressively honk and

gesture rudely as they pass by. The world of the slow driver is a world populated by

reckless, angry, and impatient people.

In both instances, however, it is the simple fact that these social actors remain

“out of synch” with the rest of the world that leads to their self-generated and self-

sustaining theories regarding others’ basic hostility, unreliability and lack of

trustworthiness (see Footnote 6). Note also that, because of the positive illusions that

social perceivers so easily sustain about themselves, they are unlikely to realize fully how

their own behavior might even elicit some of the behavior from other drivers that they

find so annoying. Thus, the fast reckless driver may prompt greater caution and slowing

down of those around them, while the slow driver may actually cause people to speed up

and go around more than might otherwise happen.

Of course, social scientists trying to develop and test theories about trust and

trustworthiness in the experimental laboratory tend to be mindful of such threats to the

internal and external validity of their inferences about human nature. Ordinary social

perceivers, however, are less likely to think spontaneously in such terms. Instead, they

are caught up in a fluid, dynamic world of purposeful action. They are likely to think of

their actions as moving them toward goals, rather than opportunities to test hypotheses

about human nature. Thus, beliefs about others’ trustworthiness tend to develop


incidentally and only after the fact. Such beliefs are residues of social experience, rather

than intended products of it.

Difficulties in Learning From Experience

Not only do paranoid social perceivers confront significiant barriers with respect

to generating representative and diagnostic samples of others’ behavior, they also face

formidable difficulties in drawing appropriate inferences and lessons from the

experiential samples they do manage to generate. Because of their presumption that

others around them lack trustworthiness, the perceived diagnostic value of any particular

social cue or bit of potentially diagnostic data is, from the outset, tainted. As Weick

(1979) noted in this regard, because all social cues are potentially corruptible, it is easy to

assume that they are in actuality corrupted. To illustrate this point, he cites an interesting

historical example. The day before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, an American

naval attache had informed Washington that he did not believe a surprise attack by the

Japanese was imminent. To justify his prediction, he cited the ‘fact’ that the Japanese

fleet was still stationed at its home base. The clear and compelling evidence for this

conclusion, he noted, was that large crowds of sailors could be observed happily and

casually strolling the streets of Tokyo. Without sailors, the fleet obviously could not

have sailed. If the sailors were still in port, therefore, so was the fleet. Q. E. D.

What the attache did not know—and, more importantly, failed to even imagine--

was that these “sailors” were in actuality Japanese soldiers disguised as sailors. They had

been ordered to pose as sailors and stroll the streets to conceal the fact that the Japanese

fleet had, in fact, left port and was currently steaming towards Pearl Harbor. From the

perspective of the Japanese, this ploy was a brilliant example of what military strategists


call "strategic disinformation". The purpose of strategic disinformation is, of course, to

mislead an adversary about one’s true capabilities, intentions or actions (Kramer,

Myerson, & Davis, 1990). In this instance the deception worked beautifully.

In elaborating on the implications of this incident, Weick noted that the very

desire and determination of the attache to find a “fool-proof” cue about Japanese

intentions, made him, ironically, more vulnerable to manipulation about the nature of

those intentions. Quoting a passage from Goffman (1969), Weick reasoned that, “the

very fact that the observer finds himself looking to a particular bit of evidence as an

incorruptible check on what is or might be corruptible, is the very reason he should be

suspicious of this evidence” (p. 172). After all, Weick notes, “the best evidence for him is

also the best evidence for the subject to tamper with (p. 173)

From the perspective of the paranoid social perceiver, of course, the attache’s

experience provides dramatic proof of what happens when individuals allow their

vigilance to become too lax. Innocence regarding others’ trustworthiness can be too

readily assumed, and with fatal consequences. In a world presumed to be sinister, social

cues are always corrupted and always in a predictably dangerous direction. As Weick

(1979) pointedly observes, “When the situation seems to be exactly what it appears to be,

the closest likely alternative is that the situation has been completely faked” (p. 173).

From the standpoint of the paranoid social perceive, the fleet, figuratively speaking, has

always stealthily sailed and sailors are never just sailors.

Ironically, even the complete absence of any cues at all can be construed as a

powerful form of confirmatory evidence to the paranoid social perceiver. Dawes (1988)

has provided a nice illustration of this possibility in his discussion of the debate over the


necessity of internment of Japanese-Americans at the beginning of the Second World

War. The question, of course, was the safety of American society given the presence of a

sizable contingent of Japanese-Americans in its midst in the middle of a war. Where

would their loyalties lie? Could they be trusted? When the late Supreme Court Chief

Justice Earl Warren (then Governor of California) testified before a congressional hearing

regarding the wisdom of internment, one of his interrogators noted that absolutely no

evidence of espionage or sabotage on the part of any Japanese-Americans had been

presented or was available to the committee. Thus, there was absolutely no objective

evidence of danger at all. Warren’s response as to how best to intrepret this absence of

evidence is revealing. “I take the view that this lack [of evidence] is the most ominous

sign in our whole situation. It convinces me more than perhaps any other factor that the

sabotage we are to get, the Fifth Column activities we are to get, are timed just like Pearl

Harbor was timed” (p. 251). He then went on to add, “I believe we are just being lulled

into a false sense of security (p. 251). When a lot is perceived to be at stake, the absence

of reassuring information can be regarded as just as informative and compelling as the

presence of threatening information.

Recent research suggests other cognitive “toeholds” for the development of

paranoid cognition in organizations. As several scholars have noted, it is easier to

destroy trust than to create or sustain it (Barber 1983; Janoff-Bulman, 1992; Meyerson,

Weick, & Kramer, 1996; Slovic, 1993). Slovic (1993) has argued that there are a variety

of factors that contribute to difference in trust-building versus trust-eroding processes.

First, negative (trust-destroying) events are more visible and noticeable than positive

(trust-building) events. Second, trust-destroying events carry more weight in judgment


than trust-building events of comparable magnitude. As evidence for his asymmetry

principle, Slovic evaluated the impact of hypothetical news events on people’s trust

judgments and found negative events had more impact on trust judgments than positive

events. Slovic noted further that asymmetries between trust and distrust may be

reinforced by the fact that sources of bad (trust-destroying) news tend to be perceived as

more credible than sources of good news.

Other related evidence suggest that violations of trust tend to "loom larger" than

confirmations of trust. For example, studies of individuals’ reactions to trust betrayals

suggests that violations of trust are highly salient to victims, prompting intense

ruminative activity, and evoking greater attributional search for the causes of the

violation (Bies, Tripp, & Kramer, 1997; Brothers, 1995; Janoff-Bulman, 1992). To the

extent that violations of trust are coded as losses, they should loom larger than "mere"

confirmations of trust of comparable magnitude. For example, failure to keep a promise

should have more impact on judgments about trustworthiness than "merely" keeping a

promise. This general argument is supported as well by evidence that cognitive responses

to positive and negative events are often highly asymmetrical (Peeters & Czapinski,

1990). In aggregate, such asymmetries imply that information supportive of a stance of

distrust should be weighted and evaluated differently than information of the same

magnitude that is supportive of trust. For the paranoid social perceiver, such asymmetries

are likely to be even more salient and pronounced because of the perceptual readiness to

detect bad (trust-destroying) versus good (trust-affirming) evidence.

There are also a number of social dynamics that can contribute to the emergence

and maintenance of organizational paranoia. The first concerns the role of gossip in the


diffusion of paranoia. Recent research indicates that information that provides grounds

for distrust may diffuse through a social system more rapidly than information pertaining

to trust. For example, Burt and Knez (1995) showed how network structures, and the

social dynamics they create, differentially affect rates of diffusion of trust-relevant versus

distrust-related information. Using a sample of managers in a high tech firm, they

investigated the influence of third-parties on the diffusion of trust and distrust within

managers’ networks. Burt and Knez argued that third parties are more attentive to

negative information, and often prefer negative gossip to positive information and gossip.

Consistent with their general theoretical expectation, they found that, although both trust

and distrust were amplified by third-party disclosures, distrust was amplified to a greater

extent than trust. As a result, judgments about distrust had, as Burt and Knez put it, a

“catastrophic” quality to them.

A Model of Organizational Paranoia: How the Intuitive Social Auditor Goes Astray

In the preceding pages, I have attempted to lay a foundation for the general

argument that social uncertainty plays a central role in the development of organizational

paranoia. To advance this argument, I have invoked a number of theoretical constructs

and empirical findings from a number of recent and disparate streams of social cognitive

theory and research. It may be useful, accordingly, to attempt to pull the various strands

of theory and data more tightly together. Accordingly, Figure 1 is offered as a schematic

representation of a social information processing or “auditing” model of organizational

paranoia.

[Insert Figure 1 about here]


As noted earlier, a prominent assumption of such models is that a complete

understanding of organizational paranoia--or any form of social cognition, for that

matter--requires recognition of the influence that the context in which cognition is

embedded exerts on social judgment and inference. From the perspective of such a

framework, what the intuitive social auditor sees and infers with respect to trust depends

quite literally on where he or she stands in the organization.

As the figure indicates, social uncertainty is presumed to play a central role in

initiating a cycle of social appraisal and coping that fosters paranoid-like perception and

behavior. Specifically, social uncertainty induces several psychological states, including

heightened self-consciousness, heightened perceptions of evaluative scrutiny, uncertainty

about one’s status in the group, and reduced perceptions of psychological safety.

Because social uncertainty and the psychological states it engenders are aversive

states, individuals are motivated to make sense of, and attempt to reduce or eliminate, this

uncertainty. The more discomforting and aversive the uncertainty, the greater the

motivation to do so and the more earnest the effort at uncertainty reduction.

The model assumes that these initial attempts at sensemaking and uncertainty

reduction reflect intendedly adaptive appraisal and coping responses. In other words, an

assumption of the model is that individuals experiencing social uncertainty engage in

what they construe as reasonably vigilant appraisal and mindful action. If these initial

attempts at uncertainty reduction are successful, feelings of psychological safety are

enhanced, self-consciousness diminished, and the perception of being under evaluative

scrutiny reduced. Thus, trust can begin to build and the individual's attention can be

claimed by other emergent concerns.


However, when individuals' efforts at uncertainty management are unsuccessful,

social vigilance and appraisal are characterized by a hypervigilant mode of social

auditing and a tendency to engage in dysphoric rumination about one’s perceived

problems. As suggested by the figure, hypervigilance and rumination are posited to

enjoy a circular causal relationship. Specifically, hypervigilant appraisal of social

information tends to generate additional "raw data" about which the paranoid social

perceiver is likely to ruminate. Such rumination helps generate, in turn, additional and

ever more sinister "hypotheses" that push the already hypervigilant social auditor towards

ever closer scrutiny of others' actions.

Hypervigilance and dysphoric rumination contribute to several distinct models of

paranoid-like social misjudgment and misperception. Specifically, they foster the

cognitive elaboration of individuals' trust-related "mental accounts," the overly

personalistic construal of social interaction and sinister attribution bias.

These cognitive distortions and biases result in heightened concerns about others’

trustworthiness, fostering self-protective or defensive behaviors. These behaviors include

behavioral inhibition (e.g., reluctant to engage in personal self-disclosure) and social

withdrawal. Unfortunately, these behaviors tend to elicit responses from others that

exascerbate the paranoid perceiver’s difficulties. Specifically, they foster a tendency for

those around the individual to attribute paranoia to them and a reluctance to interact with

the individual. These responses contribute to further social uncertainty on the part of the

paranoid perceiver. Thus, the cycle has a self-entrapping or autistic character to it.

The model does not, it should be emphasized, provide a complete account of all of

the causal factors that influence the development of paranoid cognition within


organizations. In this respect, the model is offered as a “middle range” account that

serves to organize and integrate a fair amount of what is currently known about the

cognitive underpinnings of organizational paranoia and their origins (see Footnote 7).

The model is offered as a

heuristic device for stimulating further research, rather than intended as a final statement.

Reducing Organizational Paranoia: Rendering Trust Less Elusive and Less Fragile

The model of organizational paranoia developed in this chapter and the evidence

presented in support of it suggests how readily organizational paranoia can gain a toehold

and flourish within organizational situations where high levels of social uncertainty exist.

The analysis identifies a variety of factors that contribute to the emergence of

organizational paranoia, and that help explain the resilience of such paranoia even in

situations where only the flimsiest and most ambiguous evidence exists to support it. The

model also makes clear some of the deleterious consequences associated with such

cognition. In light of the persistence of organizational paranoia and the perverse

consequences it imposes, it is important to consider the question of how the problem of

organizational paranoia might be addressed. Can organizational paranoia be reduced, and

if so how?

The general problem of reducing or eliminating organizational paranoia can be

approached from a number of vantage points, including thinking about organization-level

interventions and remedies that are designed to lessen the climate of collective distrust

and suspicion among organizational members. The problem can be viewed, at least in

part, as one of uncertainty reduction. Concretely, such uncertainty-reducing measures


include providing sufficient reassurance to individuals that the doubts and concerns they

possess are, in actuality, exaggerated or ungrounded.

One way such reassurance can be provided is through means of structural

solutions that promote more information flows and/or contact between individuals or

groups that distrust each other. If paranoia within organizations is partly about

individuals’ uncertainty regarding the trustworthiness of other organizational members,

then both explicit and tacit understandings regarding transaction norms, obligations, and

exchange practices provide an important basis for addressing such concerns. Particularly

useful is information indicating that others in the organization are likely to behave in a

trustworthy fashion, even in the absence of individuating knowledge about their

trustworthiness. Such generalized knowledge can be viewed as a source of

depersonalized trust described earlier (Brewer, 1981).

Organizational rules, both formal and informal, capture much of the

depersonalized knowledge and generalized expectations that organizational members

possess about each other and the organization as a whole (March, 1995). Rule-based trust

is thus predicated on members' shared understandings regarding the system of rules

regarding appropriate (allowed) and inappropriate (disallowed) behavior. To be most

effective, adherence should be perceived as voluntary and readily forthcoming because of

internalized values, commitments, and a sense of obligation (Fine & Holyfield, 1996). As

March and Olsen (1989) put it, rule-based trust is sustained within an organization “not

[by] an explicit contract . . . [but] by socialization into the structure of rules" (p. 27).

When reciprocal confidence in members' socialization into and continued adherence to a


normative system is high, mutual trust can acquire a taken-for-granted quality. Trust

becomes tacit.

Fine and Holyfield (1996) provide a nice illustration of how such explicit rules

and tacit understandings function to create and sustain high levels of mutual trust within

an organization. Their study examined the bases of trust in the Minnesota Mycological

Society, an organization that consists of amateur mushroom afficionados. This

organization provides a rich setting in which to study the bases of presumptive trust for

several reasons. First, the costs of misplaced trust in the organization can be quite severe:

eating a mushroom that someone else has mistakenly declared safe for consumption can

lead to serious illness and even, in rare instances, death. Given such risks, Fine and

Holyfield note, credibility is lost only once unless a mistake is reasonable. Consequently,

members are likely to be fairly vigilant about assessing and maintaining high levels of

mutual trust and trustworthiness. Second, because membership in the organization is

voluntary, exit is comparatively costless. If doubts about others’ trustworthiness become

too great, therefore, members will take their trust elsewhere and the organization will die.

Thus, the organization’s survival depends upon its ability to successfully instill and

sustain perceptions of mutual trustworthiness among its members.

Fine and Holyfield identified three important bases of trust within this

organization, which they termed awarding trust, managing risk, and transforming trust.

One way trust is created, they observed, is to award trust to others even when confidence

in them may be lacking. For example, considerable social pressure is exerted on novices

to consume dishes at banquets prepared by other members. As Fine and Holyfield put it,

there is an insistence on trust. Thus, even if members remain privately anxious, their


public behavior connotes high levels of trust. Collectively, these displays constitute a

potent form of social proof to members that their individual acts of trust are sensible.

An insistence on trust is adaptive, of course, only if collective trustworthiness is

actually in place within the organization. The difference between blind, foolish trust and

mindful and constructive commitment to an organizational order is obvious.

Accordingly, a second crucial element in the creation of trust within this organization

occurs through practices and arrangements that ensure individual competence and due

diligence with respect to all of the routines and activities that the collective life of the

group depends on. This result is achieved partially through meticulous socialization of

newcomers to the organization. Novices participate in these socialization processes with

appropriate levels of commitment because it helps them manage the personal risks of

mushroom eating and also because it helps them secure a place in the social order of the

group. In turn, more seasoned organizational members teach novices out of a sense of

obligation, having themselves benefitted from instruction from those who came before

them. This repaying of their own instruction constitutes an interesting temporal

(transgenerational) variant of depersonalized trust. This requirement that oldtimers

socialize newcomers has a second and less obvious benefit: it continually forces them to

articulate the rules, reminding them as well which attitudes and behaviors are critical to

the maintenance of collective trust. Thus, this form of trust is not simply trust in the

expertise and motivation of specific individuals, but more importantly, trust in a social

system characterized by collective expertise and high motivation.

Over time, Fine and Holyfield argue, as members acquire knowledge about the

organization, the nature of trust itself becomes transformed. Early on, the organization is


simply a “validator” of trust for new members. Eventually, however, it becomes an

“arena in which trusting relations are enacted and organizational interaction serves as its

own reward” (p. 29).

Sometimes organizations and their members are even willing to accept sub-

optimal rules as solutions to their trust dilemmas, rather than live with the fear or even

mere suspicion they are being exploited or taken advantage of by others in organization.

Gambetta (1993) provided a very nice illustration of such a structural solution that

emerged among Palermo taxi drivers, where a climate of collective paranoia had resulted

in the collapse of cooperation among them. A radio-dispatcher service was initially

instituted in Palermo to help drivers locate prospective fares. Each driver contributes to

provide the central dispatcher, so the dispatcher is, in this sense, a public good. The

dispatcher, on receiving a call, was supposed to give the call to the driver who happened

to be nearest the caller. Unfortunately, knowing this decision rule, drivers had incentives

to misrepresent (overstate) their proximity to the caller, because there was no obvious

way for the radio dispatcher to verify whether cabbies were telling the truth or not

regarding their location. As suspicions spread that others were cheating the system by

strategically misrepresenting their location, individual drivers began opting out of the

system, feeling why pay for a public good that’s gone bad. Individual drivers maintained

that “a lot of cheating” was going on, even though objective evidence of such cheating

was hard to come by (p. 221). As Gambetta noted, “If a driver were lucky enough to land

a few extra runs in a day, the other drivers would almost automatically leap to the

conclusion that he was cheating” (p. 224). Moreover, once this judgment had

crystallized, there was little that could be done to undo it. Drivers had ample time to


privately ruminate in their cabs about such “cheating.” Additionally, they could reinforce

such conclusions through collective or social rumination, by 'comparing notes' when they

took their breaks together. “In Sicily,” Gambetta wryly observed, “there is nothing as

suspicious as luck” (p. 224). By 1987, despite a population of over a million inhabitants,

this system of radio-dispatched taxi-service in Palermo had almost collapsed entirely.

The solution to this trust dilemma—and one that emerged only after ten years of

chronic and bitter failure, was to create a new allocation system where all cabs would go

to a central area, que up, and take incoming calls in order. The system readily allowed

visible verification of location. Thus, all drivers could remain assured that the system

was working fairly. Ironically, this solution did mean that passengers had to wait longer

and pay more on average for taxi service because the meter starts running once a call is

taken by the radio dispatcher and, additionally, passengers have to wait for the cab to

traverse from the central location to their destination, even if other cabbies happen to be

much closer to their calling point. As Gambetta wrly observed, however, even clearly

inferior service dominates no service at all for people whose mobility is dependent on cab

transportation.

In the case of interventions intended to create positive collective identities and

expectations of mutual trustworthiness, these prompts make salient and reinforce the

perception that organizational members, as a group, are on the whole trustworthy. Miller

(1992) provides an excellent example of this kind of socially constructed and ultimately

self-reinforcing dynamic. In discussing the underpinnings of cooperation at Hewlett-

Packard, he noted that, "The reality of cooperation is suggested by the open lab stock

policy, which not only allows engineers access to all equipment, but encourages them to


take it home for personal use" (p. 197). From a strictly economic perspective, this policy

simply reduces monitoring and transaction costs. However, from the standpoint of a rule-

based set of expectations about trust-related interactions, its consequences are more

subtle and far-reaching. As Miller (1992) observed, "the open door symbolizes and

demonstrates management's trust in the cooperativeness of the employees” (p. 197).

Because such acts are so manifestly predicated on trust in others, they tend to breed trust

in turn.

Another way in which rules foster trust is through their influence on individuals’

self-perceptions and their expectations about other organizational members. As March

(1995) observed in this regard, organizations function much like "stage managers" by

providing "prompts that evoke particular identities in particular situations” (p. 72). Rule-

based practices of this sort can exert subtle influences, not only on individuals’

expectations and beliefs about the trustworthiness and honesty of other organizational

members, but also their self-perceptions of their own honesty and trustworthiness as well.

As Miller notes in this regard, by eliminating time clocks and locks on equipment room

doors at Hewlett-Packard, the organization built a “shared expectation among all the

players that cooperation will most likely be reciprocated" creating "a shared 'common

knowledge' in the ability of the players to reach cooperative outcomes" (p. 197). By

institutionalizing trust through practices at the macro-organizational level, trust becomes

internalized at the micro level. Thus, rule-based trust becomes a potent form of

expectational asset (Knez & Camerer, 1994) that facilitates spontaneous coordination and

cooperation among organizational members.

Putting Paranoia in Perspective: Toward a Positive Theory of Doubt


Up to this point, the analysis has emphasized almost exclusively the dysfunctional

or deleterious consequences of organizational paranoia. The paranoid perceiver has been

portrayed largely as a social misperceiver who exaggerates others' malevolence and

indifference, and who tends to overestimate their lack of trustworthiness. In certain

respects, this emphasis is appropriate. After all, to the extent that paranoid cognitions

represent systematic patterns of misperception in organizations, they obviously constitute

a maladaptive mode of social information processing and should be analyzed much like

other forms of social misperception found in social psychology (Kunda, 1999).

However, I would argue that the prevalence and ubitiquousness of such paranoia

invites contemplation of the possible functional or adaptive roles such cognitions might

play in organizational life. There are several observations that prompt consideration of

such roles. First, distrust and suspicion are not always irrational. In highly competitive or

political organizational environments, for example, an individual may have quite

legitimate cause for suspicion and concern about others’ trustworthiness. In such

environments, the costs of misplaced trust can be quite costly—and sometimes even

fatal--to one’s career. Thus, in ecologies populated by individuals who lack

trustworthiness, a propensity towards vigilance with respect to others’ lack of

trustworthiness may be quite prudent and adaptive (Bendor, Kramer, & Stout, 1991).

Even though the fears and suspicions of paranoid individuals may seem exaggerated or

inappropriate to others who are in more advantage positions, this does not mean that their

distrust is entirely misplaced or unwarranted. As Intel President and CEO Andrew Grove

(1996) likes to reminds his employees, “Only the paranoid survive” (p. 3). In

expounding on what he means by such adaptive paranoia, Grove notes,


“I believe in the value of paranoia. Business success contains the seeds of its own

destruction. The more successful you are, the more people want a chunk of your

business and then another chunk and then another until there is nothing left. I

believe that the prime responsibility of a manager is to guard against other

people’s attacks and to inculcate this guardian attitude in the people under his or

her management” (p. 3)

A better appreciation of the adaptive functions of even seemingly irrational forms

of distrust and suspicion might help us, moreover, “back into” a richer and more robust

theory of organizational trust. By understanding more completely the conditions that

give rise to such irrational forms of distrust and suspicion, and that render trust more

fragile, we may develop a better understanding of the requirements for building more

resilient systems of collective or reciprocal trust. Along these lines, the theory of

organizational paranoia developed in this chapter helps direct attention to the rather

mundane or banal “social information processing” origins of wariness of others and the

reluctance to give them the benefit of the doubt.

In commenting on the fragile and elusive character of trust in organizations,

March and Olsen (19xx) onced observed, “The greatest threat to innocence is the

awareness that not everyone else is innocent” (p. xx). As the results of the research

reviewed in this paper suggest, even the mere suspicion that others’ lack innocence may

be sufficient to tilt individuals preciptiously toward presumptive suspicion and wariness.


Footnotes

1. This comparative lack of attention to distrust as a distinct topic may reflect, at least in part, the assumption that trust and distrust are merely opposite poles of a single continuum and are symmetric (see, e.g., Gambetta, 1988 and Stzompka, 1999). This assumption has been questioned on a variety of theoretical and empirical grounds (see, e.g., Slovic, 1993).

2. More extensive treatments of these different forms of organizational paranoia can be found elsewhere. Interpersonal paranoia is discussed in Butler, Koopman, & Zimbardo, 1995. Discussions of intergroup paranoia can be found in Kramer & Messick, 1997 and Pruitt, 1987. Analyses of leader paranoia can be found in Kramer (2000) and Robins and Post (1997).

3. The emphasis placed upon intrapsychic dynamics in these early theories is not altogether surprising, given that these theories were based largely upon clinical observations made in institutional settings in which the ‘disturbed’ individual had been removed from the social contexts for which it may have represented some sort of psychological adaptation.

4. This is not to argue that clinical forms of paranoia are not indicative of any acute intra-psychic disturbance. Rather, it is to argue that extant clinical theories may underappreciate the extent to which ordinary or mundane social and situational factors contribute to the emergence and maintenance of such paranoia.

5. As recent studies have shown, autobiographical narratives of this sort are rich sources of naturalistic data and can provide important insights regarding how individuals construe different facets of their past experiences, as well as the significant lessons they extract from those experiences (see, e.g., Baumeister & Newman, 1994 and Baumeister, Stillwell, & Wotman, 1990).

6. Space does not permit a detailed explication of the behavioral manifestations and consequences of paranoid cognition. However, a general taxonomy of forms of self-defeating behavior can be found in Baumeister and Scher (1988), and their linkages to paranoid behavior found in Kramer (1995).

7. Experimental evidence for many of the specific theorized linkages in the model can be found elsewhere, including Buss and Scheier (1976). A review of this social cognitive evidence can be found in Kramer (1998).

8. This view is consonant with recent perspectives on the constructive consequences of mindful deliberation and mental self-control (Langer, 19; Taylor, Pham, Rivkin, & Armor, 1998; Wilson & Kraft, 1993; Wyer, 1996). In such environments, it may be far better to be safe than sorry.


9. Unfortunately, freeway driving also provides all too much time for the sort of hypervigilant scrutiny of other people, and dysphoric rumination about their lack of competence. For a variety of well-understood reasons, such individuals are likely to remain relatively oblivious to the possibility that their own reckless lane changes and frantic actions elicit more careful, defensive behavior from other drivers around them. Both the too fast driver and the too slow driver. The common positive illusion that one is a better than average driver insulates one further from any suspicion that it is one’s own location in a system of moving objects that generates the experience.


ReferencesAiello 1993 Computer-based monitoring: Electronic surveillance and its effects. Journal

of Applied Social Psychology, 23, 499-507.Ashford, S. J., (1986). Feedback-seeking in individual adaptation: A resource

perspective. Academy of Management Journal, 29, 465-487.Ashford, S. J. (1989). Self-assessments in organizations: A literature review and

integrative model. In L. L. Cummings and B. M. Staw (Eds.), Research in organizational behavior (Vol. 11), pp. 133-174. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.

Ashford, S. J., & Cummings, L. L. (1985). Proactive feedback seeking: The instrumental use of the information environment. Journal of Occupational Psychology, 58, 67-79.

Barber, B. (1983). The logic and limits of trust. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Baumeister, R. F. (1991). Escaping the self: Alcoholism, spirtuality, masochism, and other flights from the burden of selfhood. New York: Basic Books.

Baumeister, R. F., & Newman, L. S. (1994). How stories make sense of personal experiences: Motives that shape autobiographical narratives. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 20, 676-690.

Baumeister, R. F., & Scher, S. J. (1988). Self-defeating behavior patterns among normal individuals: Review and analysis of common self-destructive tendencies. Psychological Bulletin, 104, 3-22.

Baumeister, R. F., Smart, L., & Boden, J. M. (1996). Relation of threatened egotism to violence and aggression: The dark side of self-esteem. Psychological Review, 103, 5-33.

Baumeister, R. F., Stillwell, A., & Wotman, S. R. (1990). Victim and perpetrator accounts of interpersonal conflict: Autobiographical narratives about conflict. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 994-1005.

Baumeister, R. F., & Tice, D. M. (1990). Anxiety and social exclusion. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 9, 165-195.

Bendor, J. Kramer, R. M., & Stout, S. (1991). When in doubt: Cooperation in an uncertain world. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 35, 691-719.

Bies, R. J., Tripp, T. M., & Kramer, R. M. (1996). At the breaking point: Cognitive and social dynamics of revenge in organizations. In J. Greenberg & R. Giacalone (Eds.), Antisocial behavior in organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Boyle, R., & Bonacich, P. (1970). The development of trust and mistrust in mixed-motives games. Sociometry, 33, 123-139.

Brewer, M. B. (1981). Ethnocentrism and its role in interpersonal trust. In M. B. Brewer & B. E. Collins (Eds.), Scientific inquiry in the social sciences. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Brewer, M. B. (1991). The social self-: On being the same and different at the same time. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 17, 475-482..

Brothers, D. (1995). Falling backwards: An exploration of trust and self-experience. New York: Norton.

Brown, P. G. (1994). Restoring the public trust. Boston: Beacon.Burt, R. S., & Knez, M. (1995). Kinds of third-party effects on trust. Rationality and

Society, 7, 255-292.


Buss, D. M., & Scheier, M. F. (1976). Self-consciousness, self-awareness, and self-attribution. Journal of Research in Personality, 1976, 10, 463-468.

Butler, J. (1991). Toward understanding and measuring conditions of trust: Evolution of a conditions of trust inventory. Journal of Management, 17, 643-663.

Butler, L. D., Koopman, C., & Zimbardo, P. G. (1995). The psychological impact of viewing the film JFK: Emotions, beliefs, and political behavioral intentions. Political Psychology, 16, 237-257.

Cameron, N. (1943). The development of paranoiac thinking. Psychological Review, 50, 219-233.

Carnevale, D. G. (1994). Trustworthy government. San Franscisco: Jossey-Bass.Cialdini, R. (1996). The triple tumor structure of organizational behavior. In D. M.

Messick & A. E. Tenbrunsel (Eds.), Codes of conduct. New York: Russell Sage.Colby, K. M. (1975). Artificial paranoia: A computer simulation of paranoid processes.

New York: Pergamon Press.Colby, K. M. (1981). Modeling a paranoid mind. The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 4,

515-560.Cota, A. A., & Dion, K. L. (1986). Salience of gender and sex composition of ad hoc

groups: An experimental test of distinctiveness theory. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 770-776.

Dawes, R. (1988). Rational choice in an uncertain world. New York: Harcourt Brace.Deutsch, M. (1958). Trust and suspicion. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 2, 265-279.Deutsch, M. (1973). The resolution of conflict. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Deutsch, M. (1986). The malignant (spiral) process of hostile interaction. In R. K.

White (Ed.), Psychology and the prevention of nuclear war. New York: New York University Press.

Dodge, K. A. (1985). Attributional bias in aggressive children. In P. C. Kendall (Ed.), Acvances in cognitive-behavioral research and therapy (Vol. 4). New York: Academic Press.

Edmondson, A. (1998). Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams. Administrative Science Quarterly, 44, 350-383.

Fein, S. (1996). Effects of suspicion on attributional thinking and the correspondence bias. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 70, 1164-1184.

Fein, S., & Hilton, J. L. (1994). Judging others in the shadow of suspicion. Motivation and Emotion, 18, 167-198.

Fenigstein, A. (1979). Self-consciousness, self-attention, and social interaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 75-86.

Fenigstein, A. (1984). Self-consciousness and self as target. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47, 860-870.

Fenigstein, A., & Vanable, P. A. (1992). Paranoia and self-consciousness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 62, 129-138.

Fine, G., & Holyfield, L. (1996). Secrecy, trust, and dangerous leisure: Generating group cohesion in voluntary organizations. Social Psychology Quarterly, 59, 22-38.

Fiske, S. T. (1993). Controlling other people: The impact of power on stereotypes. American Psychologist. 48, 621-628.


Fiske, S. T., Morling, B., & Stevens, L. E. (1996). Controlling self and others: A theory of anxiety, mental control, and social control. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 22, 115-123.

Fox, A. (1974). Beyond contract: Power and trust relations. London: Faber & Faber.Frable, D., Blackstone, T., & Scherbaum, C. (1990). Marginal and mindful: Deviants in

social interaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 660-670.Frank, R. (1985) Choosing the right pond: The quest for status. New York: Oxford

University Press.Fukuyama, F. (1995). Trust: The social virtues and the creation of prosperity. New

York: Free Press.Gabarro, J. J. (1978). The development of trust and expectations. In A. G. Athos & J. J.

Gabarro (Eds.), Interpersonal behavior: Communication and understanding in relationships, 290-303. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall

Gambetta D. 1988. Can we trust trust? In D. Gambetta (Ed.), Trust: Making andbreaking cooperative relationships. Cambridge: Basil Blackwell.

Gambetta, D. (1993). The Sicilian Mafia: The business of private protection. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Garfinkel, H. (1963). A conception of, and experiments with, ‘trust’ as a condition of stable concerted actions. In O. J. Harvey (Ed.), Motivation and social interaction: Cognitive determinants. New York: Ronald Press.

Garske, J. P. (1976). Personality and generalized expectancies for interpersonal trust. Psychological Report, 39, 649-650.

Gilovich, T. (1991). How we know what isn’t so: The fallibility of human reason in everyday life. New York: Free Press.

Goethals, G. R. (1986). Fabrication and ignoring social reality: Self-serving estimates of consensus. In J. Olsen, C. P. Herman, and M. Zanna (Eds.), Relative deprivation in social comparison: The Ontario Symposium (Volume 4). Hillsdale: Erlbaum.

Goertzel, G. (1994). Belief in conspiracy theories. Political Psychology, 15, 731-742.Goffman, E. (1969). Strategic interaction. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvannia

Press.Govier, T. (1993). An epistemology of trust. International Journal of Moral and Social

Studies, 8, 155-174.Greenwald, A. G. (1980). The totalitarian ego: Fabrication and revision of personal

history. American Psychologist, 35, 603-618.Grove, A. (1996). Only the paranoid survive: How to survive the crisis points that

challenge every career. New York: Doubleday.Hardin R. (1992). The street-level epistemology of trust.

Analyse & Kritik, 14, 152-176.Harrison, A. A., & Thomas, J. M. (1997). The Kennedy assassination, unidentified

flying objects, and other conspiracies: Psychological and organizational factors in the perception of ‘cover-up.’ Systems Research in the Behavioral Sciences, 14, 113-128.

Hilton, J. L., Fein, S., & Miller, D. T. (1993). Suspicion and dispositional inference. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 19, 501-512.

Hochschild , A. R. (1983). The Managed Heart. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.


Hogg, M. A. (2000a). Self-categorization and subjective uncertainty resolutions: Cognitive and motivational facets of social identity and group membership. In J. P. Forgas, K. D. Williams, & L. Wheeler (Eds.), The social mind: Cognitive and motivational aspects of interpersonal behavior. (pp. 323-349). New York: Cambridge University Press.

Hogg, M. A. (2000b). Subjective uncertainty reduction through self-categorization: A motivational theory of social identity processes. European Journal of Social Psychology, 11, xx.

Hogg, M. A., & Mullin. 1999 xx.Hollis, M. (1998). Trust within reason. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University

Press.Janis, I.L. (1989). Crucial Decisions. New York.: Free Press.Janoff-Bulman, R. (1992). Shattered assumptions: Towards a new psychology of

trauma. New York: Free Press.Kanter, R. (1977a). Men and women of the corporation. New York: Basic Books.Kanter, R. (1977b). Some effects of proportions on group life: Skewed sex rations and

responses to token women. American Journal of Sociology, 82, 965-990.Kelley, H. H. (1973). Causal schemata and the attribution process. American

Psychologist, 28, 107-123.Kelley, H. H., & Schmidt (1989). The "aggressive male" syndrome: Its possible

relevance for international conflict. In P. Stern, R. Axelrod, R. Jervis, & R. Radner (Eds.), Perspectives on deterrence, pp. 251-286. New York: Oxford University Press.

Kipnis, D. (1996). Trust and technology. In R. M. Kramer & T. Tyler (Eds.), Trust in organizations. Thousand Oaks, Ca: Sage.

Knex, M., & Camerer, C. (1994). Creating expectational assets in the laboratory. Strategic Management Journal, 15, 101-119.

Kramer, R. M. (1994). The sinister attribution error: Origins and consequences of collective paranoia. Motivation and Emotion, 18, 199-230.

Kramer, R. M. (1995). Power, paranoia, and distrust in organizations: The distorted view from the top. Research on negotiation in organizations, 5, 119-154.

Kramer, R. M. (1996). Divergent realities, convergent disappointments in the hierarchic relation: Trust and the intuitive auditor at work. In R. M. Kramer and T. R. Tyler (Eds.), Trust in organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Kramer, R. M. (1999). Trust and distrust in organizations: Emerging questions, enduring perspectives. Annual Review of Psychology, 50, 569-598.

Kramer, R. M. (2000). Political paranoia: Antecedents and consequences. In S. Bacharach & S. Lawler (Eds), Research in the Sociology of Organizations, xx.

Kramer, R. M., Brewer, M. B., & Hanna, B. (1996). The decision to trust as a social decision. In R. M. Kramer & T. Tyler (Eds.), Trust in organizations. Thousand Oaks, Ca: Sage.

Kramer, R. M., & Martin, J. (1995). Transitions and turning points in faculty-doctoral student relationships. In P. Frost and S. Taylor (Eds.), Rhythms of academic life. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications, forthcoming.

Kramer, R. M., & Messick, D. M. (1997). Getting by with a little help from our enemies: Collective paranoia and its role in intergroup relations. In C. Sedikides,


J. Schopler, & C. A. Insko (Eds.), Intergroup cognition and intergroup behavior. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Kramer, R. M., Meyerson, D., & Davis, G. (1990). How much is enough? Psychological components of “guns versus butter” decisions in a security dilemma. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 58, 984-993.

Kramer, R. M. & Tyler, T. R. (1996) Trust in organizations: Frontiers of theory and research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Kruglanski, A. W. (1970). Attributing trustworthiness in supervisor-worker relations. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 6, 214-232.

Kruglanski, A. W. (1987). Blame-placing schemata and attributional research. In C. F. Graumann & S. Moscovici (Eds.), Changing conceptions of conspiracy, pp. 219-229.. New York: Springer-Verlag.

Kunda, Z. (1999). Social Cognition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Lane, C., & Bachmann, R. (1998). Trust within and between organizations: Conceptual

issues and empirical applications. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.Lewicki, R. J., & Bunker, B. B. (1995). Trust in relationships: A model of trust

development and decline. In B. B. Bunker & J. Z. Rubin (Eds.), Conflict, cooperation, and justice. San Francisco: Jossey Bass.

Lindskold, S. (1978). Trust development, the GRIT proposal, and the effects of conciliatory acts on conflict and cooperation. Psychological Bulletin, 85, 772-793.

Lindskold, S. (1986). GRIT: Reducing distrust through carefully introduced conciliation. In S. Worchel & W. G. Austin (Eds.), Psychology of Intergroup relations. Chicago: Nelson Hall.

Lord, C. G., & Saenz, D. S. (1985). Memory deficits and memory surfeits: Differential cognitive consequences of tokenism for tokens and observers. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 49, 918-926.

Luhmann, N. (1979). Trust and power. New York: Wiley.March, J. G. (1995). A primer on decision making. New York: Free Press.March, J. G., & Olsen, J. (19xx).Mayer, R. C., Davis, J. H., & Schmoorman, F. D. (1995). An integrative model of

organizational trust. Academy of Management Review, 20, 709-734.McAllister, D. (1995). Affect- and cognition-based trust as foundations for interpersonal

cooperation in organizations. Academy of Management Review, 38, 24-59.Melley, T. (2000). Empire of conspiracy: The culture of paranoia in postwar America.

Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Messick, D. M., & Sentis, K. P. (1983). Fairness, preference, and fairness biases. In D.

M. Messick & K. S. Cook (Eds.), Equity Theory: Psychological and sociological perspectives. New York: Praeger.

Messick, D. M., Wilke, H., Brewer, M. B., Kramer, R. M., Zemke, P. E., & Lui, L. (1983). Individual adaptations and structural change as solutions to social dilemmas. Journal of Personality and Social Psychhology, 44, 294-309.

Meyerson, D., Weick, K., & Kramer, R. M. (1996). Swift trust in temporary groups. In R. M. Kramer & T. R. Tyler (Eds.), Trust in organizations: Frontiers of theory and research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.


Moreland, R. L. (1985). Social categorization and the assimilation of "new" group members. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 48, 1173-1190.

Moreland, R. L., & Levine, J. M. (1989). Newcomers and oldtimers in small groups. In P. B. Paulus (Ed.), Psychology of group influence. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Morris, M. W., & Larrick, R. P. (1995). When one cause casts doubt on another: A normative analysis of discounting in causal attribution. Psychological Review, 102, 331-355.

Morrison, E. W. (1993). Newcomer information seeking: Exploring types, modes, sources and outcomes. Academy of Management Journal, 36, 557-589.

Norem, J. K., & Cantor, N. (1986). Defensive pessimism: Harnessing anxiety as motivation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 1208-1217.

Nye, J.S., Zelikow, P. D., & King, D. C. (1997). Why people don’t trust government. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Peeters, G., & Czapinski, J. (1990). Positive-negative asymmetry in evaluations: The distinction between affective and informational negativity effects. In W. Stroebe & M. Hewstone (Eds.), European Review of Social Psychology, 1, 33-60.

Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. (1996). Trust and citizen engagement in metropolitan Philadelphia: A case study. Washington, DC: The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press.

Pew Research Center for the People and the Press (1998). Deconstructing distrust: How Americans view government. Washington, D.C.: Pew Press.

Pilisuk, M. & Skolnick, P. (1968). Inducing trust: A test of the Osgood Proposal. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 8, 121-133.

Pipes, D. (1997). Conspiracy. New York: Free Press.Pruitt, D. G. (1987). Conspiracy theory in conflict escalation. C. F. Graumann & S.

Moscovici (Eds.), Changing conceptions of conspiracy, pp. 191-202. New York: Springer-Verlag.

Putnam, R. (2000). Bowling alone. New York: Simon & Schuster.Robins, R. S., & Post, J. M. (1997). Political paranoia. New Haven, CT: Yale University

Press.Rotter, J. B. (1980). Interpersonal trust, trustworthiness, and gullibility. American

Psychologist, 35, 1-7.Salancik, G. R., & Pfeffer, J. (1978). A social information processing approach to job

attitudes and task design. Administrative Science Quarterly, 23, 224-253.Shapiro, D. (1965). Neurotic styles. New York: Basic Books.Siegel, R. K. (1994). Whispers: The voices of paranoia. New York: Crown.Sitkin, S. B., & Roth, N. L. (1993). Explaining the limited effectiveness of legalistic

‘remedies’ for trust/distrust. Organizational Science, 4, 367-392.Sitkin, S. B., Rousseau, D. M., Burt, R. S., & Camerer, C. (1998). Special topic forum

on trust in and between organizations. Academy of Management Review, 23, whole issue.

Slovic, P. (1993). Perceived risk, trust, and democracy. Risk Analysis, 13, 675-682.Spranca, M., Minsk, E., & Baron, J. (1991). Omission and commision in judgment and

choice. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 27, 76-105.Stephan, W. G., & Stephan, C. W. (1985). Intergroup anxiety. Journal of Social Issues,

41, 157-175.


Stillwell, A. M., & Baumeister, R. F. (1997). The construction of victim and perpetrator memories: Accuracy and distortion in role-based accounts. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23, 1157-1172.

Strickland, L. H. (1958). Surveillance and trust. Journal of Personality, 26, 200-215.Sutton, R. I., & Galunic, D. C. (1996). Consequences of public scrutiny for leaders and

their organizations. In B. M. Staw & L. L. Cummings (Eds.), Research in organizational behavior (Vol. 18), pp. 201-250. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.

Swan, S., & Wyer, R. S. (1997). Gender stereotypes and social identity: How being in the minority affects judgments of self and others. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23, 1265-1277.

Swann, W., & Read, S. (1981). Self-verification processes: How we sustain our self-conceptions. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 17, 351-372.

Sztompka, P. (1999). Trust: A sociological theory. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Taylor, S. E. (1981). A categorization approach to stereotyping. In D. L. Hamilton (Ed.), Cognitive processes in stereotyping and intergroup behavior, pp. 83-114. Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum.

Taylor, S. E. (1991). Asymmetrical effects of positive and negative events: The mobilization-minimization hypothesis. Psychological Bulletin, 110, 67-85.

Taylor, S. E., & Fiske, S. T. (1975). Point of view and perceptions of causality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 32, 439-432.

Taylor, S. E., Fiske, S. T., Etcoff, N. L., & Ruderman, A. (1978). Categorical bases of person memory and stereotyping. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36, 778-793.

Taylor, S. E., & Martin, J. (1987) The present minded professor: Controlling one's career. In M. P. Zanna & J. M. Darley (Eds.), The compleat academic. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Taylor, S. E., Pham, L. B., Rivkin, I. D., & Armor, D. A. (1998). Harnessing the imagination: Mental simulation, self-regulation, and coping. American Psychologist, 53, 429-439.

Tsui, A. S., Egan, T. D., & O’Reilly, C. (1992). Being different: Relational demography and organizational attachment. Administrative Science Quarterly, 37, 549-579..

Turner, J. (1987). Rediscovering the social group: A self-categorization theory. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.

Tyler, T. R. (1993). The social psychology of authority. In J. K. Murnighan (Ed.), Social psychology in organizations: Advances in theory and practice, pp. 141-160. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

Vorauer, J. D., & Ross, M. (1993). Making mountains out of molehills: An informational goals analysis of self- and social perception. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 19, 620-632.

Weick, K. E. (1979). The social psychology of organizing. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Weick, K. E. (1995). Sensemaking in organizations. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.Weiner, B. (1985). “Spontaneous” causal thinking. Psychological Bulletin, 97, 74-84.


Wharton, A. S. (1992). The social construction of gender and race in organizations: A social identity and group mobilization perspective. In (Eds.), Research in the Sociology of Organizations (Vol. 1), pp. 55-84. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.

Whitney 1994.Wilson, T. D., & D. Kraft (1993). Why do I love thee? Effects of repeated

introspections about a dating relationship on attitudes towards the relationship. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 19, 409-418.

Wu, Jianzhong, & Axelrod, R. (1997). Coping with noise. In R. Axelrod (Ed.), The complexity of cooperation, pp. 33-39. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Wyer, R. (Ed.) (1996). Ruminative thoughts (Advances in Social Cognition, Vol. IX). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Yamagishi. XxZanna, M. P., & Darley, J. M. (1987). On managing the faculty-graduate student

research relationship. In M. P. Zanna and J. M. Darley (Eds.), The compleat academic. New York: Random House.

Zimbardo, P. G., Andersen, S. M., & Kabat, L. G. (1981). Induced hearing deficit generates experimental paranoia. Science, 212, 1529-1531.

Zuboff, 1988 xx.Zucker, L. G. (1986). Production of trust: Institutional sources of economic structure,

1840-1920. In B. M. Staw & L. L. Cummings (Eds.), Research in organizational behavior (vol. 8), pp. 53-111. Greenwich, CT: JAI Press.


Social Uncertainty

Induced Psychological States

Heightened Self-ConsciousnessHeightened Perceptions of Evaluative Scrutiny

Uncertainty about StatusReduced Perceptions of Psychological Safety

Cognitive Appraisal and Coping Responses

Hypervigilance Dysphoric Rumination

Trust-related Mental Accounting

Cognitive ElaborationOverly Personalistic Construal of Social Interactions

Sinister Attribution Bias

Heightened Concerns about Others’ Trustworthiness

Defensive Behaviors

Behavioral InhibitionSocial Withdrawal

Social Consequences

Paranoid Attribution BiasAvoidant Responses

Figure 1. A Social Auditing Model of Organizational Paranoia

Documents

Paranoia - Social Uncertainty and the Fragility of Trust